MSU's BarodaNet project nearing completion

VADODARA: She jostled for cyber space, clambered for an IT environment and for long tried to shake off her archaic and sluggish image.
When other universities featured sleek luring looks on the web and e-mailed brochures, the MS University panted heavily in the confines of hardbound reports and primitive promotional catalogues.
The new age student was simply out of bounds and unimpressed.But the moment of reckoning seems to have arrived and MSU is about to evolve with bytes finally pumping through the 22-km fibre backbone laid out in the campus.
Come July and it will rain internet for MSU. The varsity here will become the first in Gujarat to boast of a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure with project BarodaNet nearing completion.
"The cable is ready to be lit. All 13 faculties including medicine and over 100 departments will go online and connected via intranet," said Rumy Mistry, trustee of the Technology Promotion Trust (TPT).
TPT is administering the funds, some $5 million, raised by US-based MSU alumni for BarodaNet. While the project generated much enthusiasm when conceived, it''s slackened pace frustrated many on the MSU campus.
But this time Mistry is confident of the July deadline. "The OFC has been laid and terminated in every building on the campus. There are about 1,500 node connections. Switches are ready and soon the cable will be lit," Mistry said.
MSU has about 900-1,000 personal computers, each of which will be linked through BarodaNet. The varsity is looking for a 2MB raw bandwidth against the current availability of 192 kbps in Vadodara. If MSU is able to rope in a company that is able to supply it with 2MB raw bandwidth, the varsity can explore commercial opportunities.
"Internal wiring and switching was consuming more time. But now that task, too, is nearing completion. Positively by next month BarodaNet''s first phase of wiring the MSU campus and hooking it to the web with a dedicated bandwidth will be accomplished," MSU computer centre director Rama Mohan S told TNN.
The computer centre will act as the hub of the BarodaNet campus IT activity. It is currently functioning as a cyber cafe with 30 computer terminals having two dedicated leased lines of 120 kbps each.
For the MSU community, however, the long wait has killed the enthusiasm. "I have taken an internet connection from a private ISP. I waited for the promised internet connection through BarodaNet, but the wait was excruciating.
I finally paid from my own pocket for an internet connection and am using it for the students as well as for my academic work," said a department head of the arts faculty on the condition of anonymity. Perhaps change is lurking close by and this monsoon MSU and its people will get ''webbed''.