IIT-Delhi bans students from surfing net post midnight

IIT-Delhi has recently taken a decision to prohibit its students from using the internet in the hostel premises between 1am and 6am. The institute, during these five hours, disconnects the internet facility available to students in their hostel rooms.

The reason, according to Shashi Mathur, dean, students, IIT-D, is to ensure that the academic performance of students does not suffer. He says, The internet connection, which was available to students during the midnight hours earlier, would disrupt their studies. Students would watch videos or be busy on social networking sites; download movies or play games till late in the morning. Hence, waking up late and getting delayed for classes.

However, the internet facility will still be available to students 24x7 in libraries, labs and research rooms on campus. Students, who need to use the internet for their studies or project work, etc, can use these facilities. Also, we have not restricted students from using their own wireless internet connections in their rooms during the night, adds Mathur.

Students, however, are not convinced. We already have a restriction on the amount of data that we can download using the internet connection in the hostel. With the new restriction, we cant use the internet late at night. There are many students in the hostels who use the internet to study at night.