'FACEBOOK' Banned At IIT-Madras, Fried N/w Blamed.

Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has blocked the access to popular social networking site 'Facebook' on campus. The move has nothing to do with moral policing, said faculty members, but is meant to free up a congested campus network. Access to face-book has been blocked in the institute's hostels since last week. IIT-M dean of students Mr.L.S.Ganesh said, “It has been blocked for some time. The network was getting severely clogged because of the amount of traffic”.

Based on the increasing seats at IIT-M, the institute is trying to make optimal use of available resources. All freshers are ashed to carry a personal computer or laptop in the first semester, so they get familiar with the campus and enjoy its beauty. In the second semester most get a laptop, and usage is more than the institutions bandwidth that can handle.

A Professor Mr.Ganesh said “You can build a six-way highway, but too many cars still make going slow. Then we are left with only two options, either expand the highway or think about changing the traffic pattern. Usually the first option is not open. Our networks team is working diligently to see that the campus network works more efficiently”.

It is more excited to see that Tech-savvy students have found a way to access the website. As a student says, “We can use facebook through a proxy website or by making a small change to the URL. Anyway,usage is not excessive, so nobody seems to be overly upset that the site has been blocked”.

However, with the institute's annual culture festival Saarang scheduled to begin on Tuesday, many students said they were not being able to promote events on the social networking website, where it could catch more eyeballs among the target group than any other type of advertisement.

Technical experts said that it was unusual for one of the country's premier technical institutes to have to resort to blocking a site to ensure smooth traffic online.