The National Knowledge Network (NKN), established to connect around 1,500 knowledge institutions across the country through high speed data communication network, would be beneficial to private players in segments like telemedicine, said R Chidambaram, principal scientific advisor to Government of India.
We are presently establishing the network which will help deliver services like the telemedicine segment. It will take healthcare services to the rural areas which would be a major beneficiary of the project. The services could also be used by private players once it is established, said Chidambaram. He was speaking to reporters after inaugurating the seventh Indo-Australian Conference on ‘IT Security on Emerging Security Technologies’, organised by the Society for Electronic Transactions and Security (SETS), Chennai, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia and Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M).
National Informatics Centre (NIC), the agency executing the project, is linking the institutes and universities through 31 main points of presence (PoPs) across state capitals. The network has already linked around 500 institutes, said S V Raghavan, scientific secretary, office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. The project was started in April 2009 with a timeline to link 1,500 knowledge institutions in two years.
NKN is designed with emphasis on resilience, where the information in the network would not be affected by any major shake up in the system, said Raghavan.
NKN would equip stakeholders transfer knowledge within the institutes and scientists across the nation and internationally, using specialised applications which permits sharing of high performance computing facilities, e-libraries, virtual classrooms and huge database.
It comprises an ultra-high speed network with multiples of 10 Gbps, supported with a distribution layer at appropriate speeds. Participating institutions would be connected to the network seamlessly at speeds of 1 Gbps or higher.
Also Read
India is also looking at international collaboration on science based research and development on equal-partner basis, said Chidambaram.
The Indo-Australian conference discuss issues in the area of critical information on infrastructure protection against denial of service attacks. SETS and IITM and QUT regularly organise conferences of followed by workshops during which research areas are discussed. It also mull over issues with other emerging technologies like cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) wherein the users would required to have security.