Most of us remember the times at Pilani when the IPC was our worship destination; the place you go to connect to the world, proud to use that ubiquitous BITS email address on that black hole of a unix screen. Unix had a very speedy and easy interface to use, geeks would claim. The email system called pine was similarly simple – you could ‘d’ for delete, ‘b’ for bounce and ‘n’ to read next emails. And then on ‘prithvi’, you could secretly ‘finger’ people and ‘talk’ or ‘write’ them. Oh, and you got to browse the www by ‘lynx’ing, then imagining where text would go and what sequence they would be in. All this if you found a spot in the 300-computer IPC. There was the beloved S9, of course, where you could pay days in advance to secure 30 min slots to check your gmail, print apps to MS & PhD programs, download journals and papers for your psenti-sem project or simply to savor the need for an electronic mouse.
But a whole wide world of color and interactivity lay beyond for us to explore. Galvanized by then Director S Venkateswaran, BITSAA decided in 2002 that there was just too much education outside of the Faculty Divisions to be explored. Thus was seeded the BITSConnect project, a $1.5 million network connectivity project. Over nine months, alumni raised $750,000 from within their community, proposals and bids evaluated and the network designed. In two phases in 2003 and 2004, the most advanced network at any Indian university was launched, providing BITS with a gigabit backbone, broadband access and telephones and video conferencing abilities (IP telephony) in every room in every bhawan (hostel), all staff quarters, the guest house, as well as wireless access in Sky and the Library. ‘Neuron’ was inaugurated by then President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.
BITSConnect enabled campus course material delivery on the network, research and collaboration in niche areas of work and enhancing virtual classes for DLPD (also enabling network gaming and uncontrolled file sharing, but we don’t want to get into that, do we?) The project was a case study in alumni stepping beyond their mandate. It was also a fine example of volunteers relentlessly sweating it out to brilliantly execute a project of gigantic proportions, seeking nothing in return except to revel in being BITSians. Here are some photos from when the Neuron was being built (http://dev.bitsaa.org/vivek/gallery/bitsconnect ).
Since 2004, BITS, Pilani has grown to become a four campus university, with collectively more than 10,000 students. There is a need and plenty of enthusiasm to collaborate on research and share learning across campuses, apart from a growing need for highly specialized faculty in niche areas, in particular adjunct faculty from other institutes who can share their knowledge.
BITSConnect 2.0
They say history repeats itself. As an increasingly talented and resourceful bunch, are we ready for our next challenge? BITSConnect 2.0 is a million dollar project that envisions bringing state-of-the-art data networks and telepresence to all four campuses to enable remote learning in participatory distributed classrooms, collaborative research, remote recruiting, among other applications. BITSAA is stronger and more active than ever, with chapters in more than 60 countries. Can we do it bigger and better this time?