Page 82 - DLIS101_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SOCIETY

Unit 7: Libraries and Information Centers in India

capabilities in the area of net-working, especially in protocol software engineering. It has not only Notes
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. UNDP has lauded ERNET as one of the most successful programmes it
has funded. The Govt. of India has committed itself to further strengthen the project by including it
in the 9th Plan with the allocation of funds and by creation of a new organisational set-up in the
form of a Society. The Science community of the country has also recognized ERNET’s contribution—
both for infrastructure services as well as for R&D. The Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet
has adopted ERNET as the platform for launching an S&T network in the country.

The Objectives of ERNET India
• ERNET operations, i.e., providing state-of-the-art communication infrastructure and services
to Academic and Research institutions, Govt. organisations, NGOs, private sector R&D
organisations, and various other non-commercial organisations;
• Research and development;
• Training and Consultancy;
• Content development.

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 (UNDP), involving eight premier
institutions as participating agencies—NCST (National Centre for Software Technology) Bombay,
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 and the OSI-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.
ERNET was alloted Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by InterNIC in 1990. Subsequently Class C
addresses were alloted to ERNET by APNIC.
All IITs, IISc Bangalore, 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 in
Virginia near Washington DC.
In 1998 ERNET India was registered as Autonomous Society.
In 1999-2000 new terrestrial high speed backbone was setup.
In 2000 POP infrastructure was upgraded.
Satellite WAN was setup in 1993.
Today, 1100 institutes are ERNET users under different schemes.

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