Server goes down, IGNOU online exam fails

By siliconindia   |    31 Comments
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New Delhi: It was Indira Gandhi National Open University's (IGNOU) first online Engineering Entrance Test and when the IGNOU server failed to respond to the increased traffic, the whole endeavor of the university going online was also marred. The test, scheduled in five sessions, two on October 31 and three on November 1 had 9,349 takers. But when the candidates finally sat for the exam, only two questions popped up on the screen, said sources. It was the first joint attempt of IGNOU with Chennai-based Sri Angala Parameshwari Education Trust to conduct an online test for any of its course, which ran into a major faux pas. "The exam has now been postponed by at least two weeks. There was a problem with the server since it received over a lakh hits during the exam. Though the exam was meant only for 9,349 candidates, the reason for the server going down will be accessed from Yahoo," said the Coordinator of the test, S.K. Vyas. IGNOU's Vice Chancellor (VC), V. N. R. Rajasekharan Pillai said that the anomaly could be a result of sabotage. "We will definitely go into the details of the investigation to find out what exactly went wrong. It would be too early to comment upon the matter now," said the VC. Raising concerns over using technology to conduct examinations, some officials directed their suspicion towards hacking while Ajit Kumar, Director of School of Engineering and Technology did not see eye to eye towards the reason. "Hacking was not the reason for the snag to happen. We use the URL which has a flexible bandwidth and according to me the problem occurred due to a heavy incoming traffic which resulted into jamming," said the Director. The exam will now be conducted in a couple of weeks using the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets. "Investigating the whole process may take some time but we are not going to spare even a simple indication as to what went wrong. We require a highly secured system akin to those used in banks," he added. Although the officials claim it just to be a faux pas, the students have no option other than to suffer. "If 9000 students are too much of a number to handle for an online exam then I think they are not capable of going online. It is easy for the administration to declare another date for the examination but it is the student who ultimately faces the brunt," said a student from Bihar.

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