The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission’s servers were down for the entire day on Monday, stressing out aspirants and parents.

Round 1 of counselling was in progress and students had to fill out their choice of colleges from Monday to Wednesday. Many parents and aspirants who had come to the TNEA facilitation centres (TFC) in Science City and Central Polytechnic campus in Taramani (CPT) spent the entire day waiting for the server to respond.

C.R. Balaji decided to visit the Taramani TFC as he did not want to take a chance with the internet service at home. His son had secured a seat in a self-financed college in the management quota but hoped to be admitted through counselling as the fee would be ₹80,000 lower, he said.

“I came from Mandaveli but the server was down. They (TNEA officials) told us that the issue would be resolved but the problem was not resolved even after 3 p.m. I had taken leave today for this purpose. I cannot take leave again tomorrow,” he rued.

Around 5.30 p.m. when the server recovered, he said he managed to fill in the choices.

R. Nithisree and her friends remained glued to their computers since noon. With a cut off of 192, she was hoping to fill in her choices. “The page was down the whole day. I tried calling the Directorate of Technical Education helpline and they said the server would be restored by evening,” she said.

Clash of counselling

DoTE officials said the heavy online traffic was due to a clash of two counselling phases.

“The first and second round counselling were happening simultaneously so we had 20,000 hits. In the first phase, students were filling their choices while in second candidates were making payment. The students could not make payment but choice filling was happening, though slow. We rectified it by 5 p.m.,” he said.