NEW DELHI: ERNET India has announced that it would offer high-end training
courses in networking in collaboration with Cisco. While ERNET will offer the
infrastructure and host the training, Cisco will provide the training material
as well as the course instructors. These courses which will span for five days
will be held at the premises of the ERNET office headquarters at New Delhi. The
first batch is expected to commence on May 21, every month, depending on the
number of candidates registering for the course.
The course is limited only to 16 seats and will offer hands-on-experience in
maintaining networks. The number of seats for the course has been restricted
considering the limited resources available to provide the necessary experience
for the candidates, said ERNET director Dr Surendra Pal.
ERNET is a countrywide networking system that links more than 500 institutes
in the country including premier institutes like IITs, IISc, RECs. With a
combination of dedicated leased lines and satellites, the network's capacity
vary in the range of 2-8 Mbps.
These courses in network management comes in the wake of the MoU signed
between Minister of Information Technology, Pramod Mahajan and CEO and president
of Cisco Systems John Chambers, during the Minister’s recent visit to the US.
Under the agreement, both sides will undertake collaborative work in R&D and
training and set up a Center of Excellence that will test and showcase new
technology and products from Cisco.
Though the present fee of Rs 35,000, per head, can be perceived as being too
expensive, officials are counting on the reputation held by the two firms
involved and are hoping to get a positive response from candidates. The
government also hopes to gain some benefits from this venture, by creating a
group of experienced personnel whose services could then be sought to man
government networks.
With the government reluctant to allow private parties to man their networks
spreading across spread across the country, due to security reasons, a need has
arisen to create qualified professionals who would then be able to provide their
services to the government departments, said an ERNET official.