Let me document some of the significant changes that were made to the system since the deployment of "kaveri" (in 1997-1998).
- Switch over of mail/dns services to imsc4, gulmohar and banyan.
- Removal of "telnet" and "ftp" services from system servers. (Replaced by "ssh" and "scp").
- Deployment of firewall and 2Mbps link.
- Deployment of ns/mail as external mail servers with banyan as the central mail server. (Switch from sendmail to exim.)
- Making mail only accessibly via IMAP, ssh to banyan or webmail. (In particular, no NFS access to mail).
- Removal of password based remote access to IMSc Lan.
- Move of NIS services from kaveri to banyan.
Each of these was at least as "major" as the switch-over to "kaveri" which merely involved shutting down the file-server for a day and copying over the files and users.
The fact that this has been achieved goes to the credit of all concerned --- including our users. Still, the system admins deserve more credit for the smooth running of our system than people are willing to give them.