A Garden Full of Laptops

The Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (IBS) is no

ordinary business school. After all, it has an enviable profile of promoters

featuring the who’s who in the industry, and an equally impressive faculty

headed by Sumantra Ghoshal from London School of Management. Students here clear

their GMAT to study with their peers at the Wharton School and the Kellogg

School of Management through video-conferencing facilities. They pay a fee of Rs

10 lakh per annum and carry laptops.

Amongst the many firsts to its credit, the most exciting that

IBS can boost of is its wireless LAN network. Students can log in anywhere be it

at the poolside, the gym or by the lake. The aim is that while at work, the

creativity of students should not be curtailed. Students have the option of

working on their projects, sitting in groups anywhere in the campus. All they

need to do is insert the LAN card in their laptops. The first phase was

inaugurated in June and the second in December 2001. The entire campus of 250

acres has wireless access.

How does it work? The wireless LAN involves setting up a

network of access points across the campus to catch signals from the nearest

laptops. Each laptop has two LAN cards. If one of the central switches fails,

the other takes over. This ensures that the network is ‘always on’.

These signals are transmitted at 2.4 MHz, which requires

government clearance. This frequency is free in other countries but comes at a

cost in India. It requires a one time payment of Rs 18,000 and thereafter an

annual fee of Rs 2000-3000 per user. Each access point can support up to 40

users logging in simultaneously. So far, 150 wireless LAN cards have been

distributed amongst users. (120 students and 30 faculty members). The campus

also boasts a fiber-optic cable network, in place and running. It has 1 Mbps

connectivity, which will be scaled to 2 Mbps soon.

Says Vivek Mahajan, Director, Infotech Network who

implemented the project, "The networking project itself was about Rs 8

crore and the WLAN came to about Rs 40 lakh. But what is significant is that

this is the first instance of the use of WLAN in an academic institute."

Industry estimates place the size of the Indian market in the current year at $

0.1 million, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 80 % to be a $10 million

market by 2006.

Infotech Network has already deployed the WLAN network of Dr

Max at different locations in the city. It has also set up the WLAN connectivity

between the Jaypee’s Group’s manufacturing unit in Sahibabad and its office

in Vasant Vihar.

The company is also in the process of setting up a similar

network connecting the various offices of the Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Group in

Noida. The company has also executed the WLAN project at the Ranbaxy office in

Nehru Place. According to Mahajan, an in-depth study of the city’s topography

has gone into designing the networks for these corporates, especially since

there has to be clear line of sight architecture for the antennas.

Balaka Baruah Aggarwal/CNS

in New Delhi