October 13, 2010
School of Engineering, Bengaluru
 

Final-year B. Tech. students Saurabh Rai (ECE), Anirudh M. M. (EIE) and Sai Kiran G. S. (CSE) from the Bengaluru campus came in second in the competition “Cisco India Net Riders.”
 

An online technical contest, Cisco India Net Riders tests the students’ knowledge of networking fundamentals.
 

These final-year engineering students are enrolled in a course to obtain certification as Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). The course curriculum includes advanced skills required to manage end-to-end converged network infrastructures.
 

As part of the course, students have the opportunity to troubleshoot during their lab sessions.
 

As part of the Amrita team that qualified as one among the top three teams, the students then represented India at the “Cisco SAARC Net Riders” competition.
 

A virtual competition open to participants from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the “Cisco SAARC Net Riders” comprises several rounds that feature objective-type questions, followed by designing, configuring and troubleshooting activities.
 

“We were given software with configuration errors and were asked to troubleshoot,” the team from Amrita shared.
 

“Also we were asked to provide in writing the corrections that we made. We had to elaborate on the approaches taken and write the commands we used to troubleshoot.”
 

The Amrita team placed fifth in competition with other teams from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
 

Last year, the team from Amrita had placed first and had gone on to compete in the “Cisco Asia Pacific” contest.
 

Two students of this year’s winning team, Anirudh and Sai Kiran, had competed as part of the previous year’s winning team also. They had placed ninth in this global contest bringing laurels to India and Amrita.
 

The Asia-Pacific contest was conducted via video conferencing; participating teams came from over fifteen countries.
 

“It was an amazing experience to be part of such a huge technical event,” stated the students. “It gave us the opportunity to implement practically what we had learned.”
 

We congratulate these student achievers!