November 10, 2011
School of Engineering, Bengaluru
The Amrita School of Engineering, Bengaluru was recently requested by ISOC, Bengaluru to host workshops for a major conference titled INET.
ISOC or the Internet Society is a ten-year old nonprofit organization in Bengaluru that aims to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education and policy matters in India.
“Our main aim is to connect to more people, promote internet usage among them and bring awareness about various applications in the internet space,” stated Ankush Bagotra, Chairman, ISOC.
“We were impressed by the infrastructure in the Amrita campus and were confident about receiving support from the student community; hence our decision to host the workshops here,” he added.
On the first day of the INET conference hosted at Taj Hotel in MG Road, nearly two hundred delegates listened as distinguished speakers shed light on various topics related to the growth of Internet in India.
“The number of Internet users globally crossed the 2 billion mark around the beginning of 2011,” they learned. “Asia Pacific has led this growth, and has the largest number of Internet users today.”
“In India, current estimates put the number of Internet users at over 100 million. This number is expected to double and encompass some 20% of India’s total population by 2015. The launch of 3G mobile services in India will also add to this growth due to the large, and growing, mobile phone subscriber base in the nation.”
Speakers included experts from Google India, Yahoo! India, Huawei Technology, Flipkart, Reliance Foundation, Juniper, Idea Cellular, snapdeal.com and redBus.in.
In addition to social media, mobile internet services and e-commerce, security and privacy related issues were discussed. Delegates gained insights into how online transactions could be made more secure. They learned about opportunities that lay ahead for developers, operators and subscribers.
“The first day’s proceedings gave us a chance to listen to and interact with experts from regional and global arenas who operate in the web space,” shared V.D. Suresh, second year student of B.Tech. (Electronics and Communications Engineering) at Amrita.
“After attending the conference and the workshops, I am definitely now more aware of the penetration of the Internet and the challenges and opportunities in the online world,” he added.
The next day, several hands-on workshops were organized at the Bengaluru campus for delegates. The Ethical Hacking workshop was one of the more popular ones.
“We learned about different methods adopted by hackers to attack websites,” shared Ipsita Mishra, second-year Amrita student of B.Tech. (Computer Science and Engineering) at Bengaluru, who participated.
“We are now more aware of the vulnerabilities that can exist in websites and know more about the methods to help secure websites against possible attacks,” she added.
Other workshops included those on IPv6, Mobile Application Ecosystems and Regulations in Internet and Social Media.
The ISOC management was all praise for the Amrita student volunteers who coordinated the workshops on campus. “They did a great job,” the ISOC management noted.
“We were happy to have this opportunity to help the ISOC team, even though it meant staying up late nights, prior to the conference and the workshops,” stated Arjun Abhinav, one of the Amrita students who volunteered.
The student volunteers were supported by Dr. Sudarshan TSB, Chairperson, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). The effort was coordinated by Ms. K V Vidya of the Department of CSE.
