5.1 Fund projects for development of tools and technologies for proliferation of ICT
infrastructure in unreached areas localization of Internet, fund research projects for identifying evolution of next generation networks.
5.2 Incentivize Technology, tool, content and other resource development including
support in local languages.
5.3 Establish multi stakeholder expert panels to identify the gaps and implementation
hurdles at the last mile and to formulate the annual and five year thrust areas for proliferation of Internet and internet based applications and services as also the principles of sharing and governance of the Internet itself;
5.4 Establish Interest Groups to establish vision and mission and national action plans
and programmes
5.5 Evolve and fund cutting edge and futuristic projects for evolution of next generation
networks, tools and technologies for proliferation of Internet and its benefits to the unreached
5.6 Increase awareness about the use and benefits of ICT infrastructure for social
development, quality of life, and economic growth and over all national development;
5.7 Examine and extend the Indian IT Act (Cyber Laws of India) to promulgate laws
and regulations to mitigate cyber crimes and to promote cyber transactions whether data or financial
5.8 Ensure India’s active role in global forums for public policy formulation of
governing principle for the sharing and management of the three critical internet resources namely; Root Servers, IP Address and Domain Name allocation.
6.0 National Knowledge Network
6.1 Background: The Government’s decision to set up National Knowledge Network
was announced in the Budget Speech, 2008-09. A High Level Committee (HLC) was set up under the Chairmanship of Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India to coordinate and monitor the establishment of the NKN. An initial phase was initiated by upgrading all the 17 PoPs NICNet to handle gigabit capacities; a core backbone with 2.5 G was set up and 19 institutions were connected to demonstrate the feasibility of applications such as country-wide class rooms and collaborative research. This initial phase was inaugurated by Hon’ble President of India in April 2009.
In March 2010 the Government approved the establishment of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) at an outlay of Rs.5990 crore, to be implemented by NIC over a period of 10 years.
6.2 Objectives:
The Objective of the NKN is to inter-connect all knowledge institutions across the country with a high speed data communication network to encourage sharing of resources and collaborative research. These would cover over 1500 Institutes comprising of all Universities, and Research Institutions. The core and associated links to about 1500 institutions are likely to be established in a span of 2-3 years.
The Network will consist of an ultra-high speed Core (multiples of 10Gbps and upwards), and over 1500 nodes. It is scalable to higher speed and more nodes also. The Core shall be complemented with a distribution layer at appropriate speeds. The
participating institutions can directly or through distribution layer connect to the NKN at speeds of 100 Mbps /1 Gbps.
The application areas envisaged under the NKN include Agriculture, Education, Health, e-governance, Grid Computing (High Performance Computing).
NKN would facilitate creation, acquisition and sharing of Knowledge resources among the large participating Institutions; collaborative research; countrywide classrooms (CWCR) etc. and help the country to evolve as Knowledge Society.
MHRD launched in February 2009 a National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technologies (NMEICT) which aims at providing high quality personalized and interactive knowledge modules over the internet/intranet for all the learners in Higher Education Institutions in any time anywhere mode. The Mission has two major components viz., (a) content generation and (b) connectivity along with provision for access devices for institutions and learners. The Mission aims to create high quality e-content for the target groups and on the other, it would simultaneously extend computer infrastructure and connectivity to over 18000 colleges in the country including each of the departments of 400+ universities/deemed universities and institutions of national importance on a single point rental basis through the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in a manner that would permit their seamless integration with the National Knowledge Network (NKN). NMEICT was approved by CCEA with an outlay of Rs.4612 crores in January 2009.
6.3 Strategy for XII Plan
There is a need for creation of side-way-networks so that benefits of NKN can trickle-down to smaller institutions. Also there is a need to initiate sectoral networks for reaping the applications in the key sectors like Agriculture, Health etc.
There is a need to promote research and innovation in the last mile connectivity to reach the connectivity to the institutions and schools at remote locations. There is a need to explore the possibilities for data centric instruments and devices that could be plugged into NKN to get the benefits of high speed and low latency networks.
7.0 ERNET India
ERNET (A scientific Society under DIT) is providing state-of-the-art Network services, such as, Internet/Intranet, web hosting, domain name registration, mail hosting and data hosting to academic and research institutions of the country in various domains viz,. health, agriculture, schools, higher education, science & technology.
R& D projects in networking like connectivity to Global Research Networks, Indian Grids and other e-infrastructures world wide.
Research and development in the area of data communications and its applications, such as, mobile IPv6, 6lowPAN, Cloud computing, IPv6 network and QoS, MPLS. Human resource development in the area of ICT and related applications for skill
creation, with focus on Networking.
Consultancy and implementation of ICT projects on turnkey basis, their management and monitoring. ERNET has executed projects like establishment of ICT Vocational centres for skill creation for the children with disabilities in the area of Information Technology, Citizen centric community centres in the remote areas of the country, e-linkage to the farmers of the country, connectivity to schools, data centres, digital repositories, campus-wide LAN, etc.
New Value added services, such as, Data Centre services, co-located servers/services, Disaster Recovery services, Managed Security services, Video/voice conferencing, Web/Multicast services.
Expertise and exposure of ERNET in varied domains would be immensely beneficial / suitable for establishing, managing and monitoring the various country wide e-infrastructure projects on turnkey basis as well as integration of various e- infrastructure elements, overlay of networks for education, rural communication, community business centres, and creation of necessary interfaces for UID.
ERNET is working in the areas of networking and IT research and application development; training to use IT infrastructure and applications; establishment of IT infrastructure in the country like for academic/educational sector in the schools, engineering institutes, farmers, community centres, research institutes, physically challenged school children, teachers, etc; project implementations like knowledge data centre, cloud computing, video conferencing, MIS,; network test beds; etc. These are being operated, managed and monitored by ERNET. Services and exposure of ERNET may be used for creating, uploading, updating, operating, managing and monitoring of data banks/ MIS with cloud computing, help line system; etc.
8 Challenges
8.1 The challenges can be seen in terms of lack of a unified networking plan for
providing e- infrastructure to all and reaching the unreached, lack of availability of resources etc.:
8.2 Lack of bandwidth and Internet service providers in rural and semi-urban areas
8.3 Incompatible and differing network standards and protocols
8.4 Fast technological obsolescence
8.5 Non-availability of trained manpower
8.6 Perception of Internet as an English language based technology among the non-
English speaking public
8.7 Low literacy levels;
8.8 Lack of bandwidth and Internet service providers in rural and semi-urban areas;
8.9 Very low accessibility to Internet, prohibitive bandwidth cost; unergonomic design
of the Computer
8.10 Lack of awareness about the benefits of Internet amongst the public at large;
8.11 Lack of localized content;
8.12 Lack of adequate outreach of Indian Language interface tools and technologies for
garnering Indian language content and services
8.14 Incompatible and differing network standards and protocols
8.15 Fast technological obsolescence;
8.16 Non-availability of trained manpower; etc.