National Knowledge Network A step toward Digital Revolution
The vision of Digital India is to transform
the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It would
ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically. It
would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of
government’s services electronically. National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a
state-of-the-art multi-gigabit presence across nation Indian resource-sharing
networkand a revolutionary step towards creating a knowledge society without
boundaries aimed at digitally connecting all national universities, colleges
and research establishments to create “country-wide virtual classrooms”.
This project was initiated in the year 2009at
an outlay of INR 5990 crore, the NKN will usher a knowledge revolution in the
country with connectivity to 1500+ institutions. It was developed to connect
all the knowledge and research institutionsincluding govt. aided engineering
colleges, IIMs, ISRO, DRDO, central universities, libraries, agricultural
institutions and medical colleges in the country using high bandwidth / low
latency network. The idea is to bring together all stakeholders from science,
technology, higher education, healthcare, agriculture and governance to a
common platform. The project was launched for a period of 10 years.
Currently, this programme is a component of
umbrella “Digital India”programme.Through National Knowledge Network (NKN), a
high-speed broadband network, the initiative is going to benefit over 50
million students and researchers in the South Asian countries by sharing
information and ideas across major fields.India is soon going to connect its
educational, medical and research institutes with other institutes in South
Asian countries, thanks to the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (Deity) for
taking such initiative. The NKN connectivity to the SAARC countries such as
Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh will be done through
undersea cable and is under process.”The NKN with its high-speed connectivity
will enable knowledge and information sharing. It will also enable
collaborative research, development and innovation as well as facilitate
advanced distance education in specialized fields such as Engineering, Science,
Medicine,” the official added.This project is aimed at establishing a strong
and robust Indian network which will be capable of providing secure and
reliable connectivity. Globally, frontier research and innovation are shifting
towards multidisciplinary and collaborative paradigm and require substantial
communication and computational power.
By facilitating the flow of information and
knowledge, the network addresses the critical issue of access and creates a new
paradigm of collaboration to enrich the research efforts in the country. The
network design is based on a proactive approach that takes into account the
future requirements and new possibilities that this infrastructure may unfold,
both in terms of usage and perceived benefits. This will bring about a
knowledge revolution that will be instrumental in transforming society and
promoting inclusive growth. Globally, research and development activities and
innovations are increasingly becoming multidisciplinary and collaborative, and
require substantialcommunication/computational power. For India to emerge as a
significant R&D hub, it has to become a part of this wave of collaboration
and co-creation. The idea of setting up of a NKN was deliberated at the office
of Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and the National
Knowledge Commission engagements were held with key stakeholders including
experts, potential users, telecom service providers and educational and research
institutions.
These discussions have yielded a consensus on
the optimal approach to be adopted for setting up such a network, to provide a
unified high speed network backbone for all the sectors.The concept which
formed one of the key focus area of the National Knowledge Commission strongly
feels that to optimally utilise the potential of institutions engaged in
generation and dissemination of knowledge in various areas, such as research
laboratories, universities and other institutions of higher learning, including
professional institutions, it is important to connect them through a high speed
broadband network. The purpose of such a knowledge network goes to the very
heart of the country’s quest to build quality institutions with requisite
research facilities and create a pool of highly trained persons.
Role of NKN:-
Establishing a high-speed
backbone connectivity which will enable knowledge and information sharing
amongst NKN connected institutes. Enabling collaborative research, development
and innovation amongst NKN connected institutes. Facilitating advanced distance
education in specialized fields like engineering, science, medicine
etc.Facilitating an ultra-high speed e-governance backbone. Facilitating
connection between different sectorial networks in the field of research.
Technical Mission:-
NKN is designed to provide
high availability, Quality of Service, security and reliability.
The purpose of NKN goes to the very core of
the country’s quest for building quality institutions with requisite research
facilities and to create a pool of highly trained professionals. The
participating institutions at the edge would seamlessly connect to NKN at
gigabit speed. NKN shall be a critical information infrastructure for India to
evolve as a knowledge society. NKN is a significant step which will enable
scientists, researchers and students from across the country to work together
for advancing human development in critical and emerging areas.The NKN is a
platform for delivering effective distance education where teachers and students
can interact in real time. This is especially significant in a country like
India where access to education is limited by factors such as geography, lack
of infrastructure facilities etc. The network enables co-sharing of information
such as classroom lectures, presentations and hand outs among different
institutions. The Virtual Library involving sharing of journals, books and
research papers across different institutions, is a natural application for
NKN.
High-performance computing is critical for
national security, industrial productivity, and advances in science and
engineering. The network enables a large number of institutions to access
high-performance computing to conduct advanced research in areas such as
weather monitoring, earthquake engineering and other computationally intensive
fields. NKN also provides an opportunity to test new hardware and software,
vendor interoperability etc. NKN acts as a super highway for integrating
e-Governance infrastructure such as Government data centres and networks. NKN
provides bulk data transfer facility required for e-Governance applications.
The author like to conclude this article by this quote, “We must ensure that
technology is accessible, affordable and adds value.
(The author is Sr. Faculty & Warden
(GCET)- Jammu)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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