New Delhi: One of the important recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is to inter-connect all knowledge institutions through high speed data communication network encouraging sharing of knowledge, specialized resources and collaborative research which has recently accorded the approval of the Cabinet committee for the establishment of a National Knowledge Network (NKN) to be implemented by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The government's decision to set up such a NKN was announced in 2008-09. An initial amount of Rs.100 crore was allocated to the department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT for the establishing the NKC.

A high-level committee was also set up to coordinate and monitor the establishment of the NKN.

"The architecture of the NKN will be scalable and the network will consist of an ultra-high speed core (multiples of 10Gbps and upwards). The core shall be complemented with a distribution layer at appropriate speeds. The participating institutions can connect to the NKN at speeds of one Gbps or to the distribution layer through a last mile connectivity bandwidth," said an official.

The NKN is expected to provide nation-wide ultra high-speed backbone/data-network highway.

Various other networks in the country can take advantage of this ultra high-speed backbone, with national and international reach to create independent and closed user groups.

The network will have about 25 crore Point of Presence (PoPs) and 600 secondary PoPs. It will connect around 1500 institutions. The physical infrastructure (setting up of core network) is expected to be completed in a span of 24 months.

The establishment of the NKN will enable scientists, researches and students from diverse spheres across the country to work together for advancing human development in critical and emerging areas.

The national network will catalyze knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer between stakeholders seamlessly - that too across the nation and globally.

It is expected to encourage a larger section of research and educational institutions to create intellectual property, which would enable the use of specialized applications that allow sharing of high performance computing facilities, e-libraries, virtual classrooms and very large databases.

Health, education, grid computing, agriculture and e-governance are the main applications identified for implementation and delivery on the network.

Applications such as countrywide classrooms will address the issue of faculty shortage and ensure quality education delivery across the country.

The crux of the success of the network is related to the education related applications, databases and delivery of services to the users on demand.

In the initial phase, a core backbone consisting of 15 PoPs have been established with 2.5 Gbps capacity.

Around 40 institutions of higher learning and advanced research have already been connected to the network and six virtual classrooms setup.