The Education and Research Network (ERNET) is an autonomous scientific society of the

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is an executive agency of the Union Government of the Republic of India. It was carved out of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on 19 July 2016 as a standalon ...

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

. ERNET has made a significant contribution to the emergence of networking in the country. It practically brought the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and has built up national capabilities in the area of net-working, especially in protocol software engineering. It is the first internet service in india. It has not only succeeded in building a large network that provides various facilities to the intellectual segment of Indian society—the research and education community, it has over the years become a trendsetter in the field of networking.

Focus

ERNET is largest nationwide terrestrial and satellite network with point of presence located at the premiere educational and research institutions in major cities of the country. Focus of ERNET is not limited to just providing connectivity, but to meet the entire needs of the educational and research institutions by hosting and providing relevant information to their users. Research and Development and Training are integral parts of ERNET activities. The activities at ERNET India are organised around five technology focus areas: *National Academic and Research Network *Research and Development in the area of Data Communication and its Application *Human Resource Development in the area of High-end Networking *Educational Content *Campus-wide High Speed Local Area Network

Beginning

ERNET was initiated in 1986 by the Department of Electronics (DoE), with funding support from the Government of India and

United Nations Development Program The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

(UNDP), involving eight premier institutions as participating agencies— NCST (National Centre for Software Technology) CDAC">Centre for Development of Advanced Computing">CDACBombay, IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Bangalore, five IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) at Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras, and the DoE, New Delhi. ERNET began as a multi protocol network with both the

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

and the

OSI OSI may refer to: Places * Osijek Airport (IATA code: OSI), an airport in Croatia * Ősi, a village in Veszprém county, Hungary * Oši, an archaeological site in Semigallia, Latvia * Osi, a village in Ido-Osi, Ekiti State, Nigeria * Osi, Ekiti ...

-IP protocol stacks running over the leased-line portion of the backbone. Since 1995, however, almost all traffic is carried over TCP/IP.

History of ERNET

* ERNET started with Dial-up network in 1986–87. * Initially UUCP mail was only service started by ERNET. * First leased line of 9.6 kbit/s was installed in Jan’1991 between Delhi and

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

. * ERNET was allotted Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by

InterNIC The Network Information Center (NIC), also known as InterNIC from 1993 until 1998, was the organization primarily responsible for Domain Name System (DNS) domain name allocations and X.500 directory services. From its inception in 1972 until O ...

in 1990. Subsequently, Class C addresses were allotted to ERNET by APNIC. * All IITs,

IISc Bangalore The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The institute was ...

, DOE Delhi and NCST Mumbai were connected by 9.6 kbit/s leased line by 1992. * In 1992, 64 kbit/s Internet gateway link was commissioned from NCST Mumbai to

UUNet UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was one of the first commercial Internet service providers. Today, UUNET is an internal brand ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

near

Washington DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

. * In 1998 ERNET India was registered as Autonomous Society. * In 1999-2000 new terrestrial high speed backbone was set up. * In 2000 POP infrastructure was upgraded. * Satellite WAN was set up in 1993. * Today, 1100 institutes are ERNET users under different schemes.

ERNET backbone

ERNET backbone is a sophisticated link of terrestrial and satellite-based

wide area network A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits. Businesses, as well as schools and government entities, us ...

s. The satellite WAN, using

VSAT A very-small-aperture terminal (VSAT) is a two-way satellite ground station with a dish antenna that is smaller than 3.8 meters. The majority of VSAT antennas range from 75 cm to 1.2 m. Bit rates, in most cases, range from 4 kbit/s up to 16 ...

technology. The VSAT network acts as an overlay for the terrestrial WAN by providing backup links between the backbone sites. International connectivity is achieved through gateways at

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

and

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

, with a total capacity of 6.64 Mb. Daily traffic over ERNET exceeds 200 GB. ERNET architecture is based on industry standard TCP/IP protocol. This network had undergone a major upgrade during year 2000–2001 in association with CMC Ltd. (A Govt. of India Undertaking, then). ERNET backbone is being enabled to support IPv6.IPv6 ERNET
ernet.in

ERNET international gateway and PoP sites

The ERNET is supported by the following backbone sites which enable organizations located at different geographical locations to access various services. *ERNET Headquarters, New Delhi *

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is an Indian autonomous scientific society, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. History CDAC was created in November 1987, initially as the Centre f ...

, Mumbai * Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore *

Indian Institute of Technology The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are central government owned public technical institutes located across India. They are under the ownership of the Ministry of Education of the Government of India. They are governed by the Institu ...

, Madras *

, Kharagpur * Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune *

Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre The Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC) is a research and development unit of the Department of Atomic Energy. The VECC is located in Kolkata, India and performs research in basic and applied nuclear sciences and development of the latest n ...

, Kolkata *

, Kanpur *

, Roorkee * University of Hyderabad * Center for Advanced Technology, Indore *

Odisha Computer Application Centre The Odisha Computer Application Centre or OCAC is a Designated Technical Directorate of Information Technology Department Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) of Government of Odisha registered under Society Registration Act, 1860 on dated 21 March ...

, Bhubaneswar * Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Thiruvananthapuram * National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology, Gorakhpur *

, Guwahati *ERNET VSAT HUB, Bangalore *

Tezpur University Tezpur University is a Central University located in Tezpur in the North-Eastern state of Assam, India, established by an act of Parliament, in 1994. History The establishment of Tezpur University is considered to be one of the outcomes of t ...

, Tezpur *

APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, formerly known as Kerala Technological University (KTU), is a state owned public university headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital of Kerala, India. It is both a teaching and affiliatio ...

, Thiruvananthapuram

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ernet National Knowledge Network Academic computer network organizations Wide area networks Internet in India Companies based in New Delhi Research institutes in Delhi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India) National research and education networks Science and technology in India Telecommunications in India