Background

• One of the important recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is to inter-connect all knowledge institutions. Through high speed data communication network.
• This would encourage sharing of knowledge, specialized resources and collaborative research.

• The Government’s decision to set up such a National Knowledge Network 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 (HLC) was also set up to coordinate and monitor the establishment of the NKN.
• 20,000 Colleges, each with 20 BB VPN connections of 512 Kbps each
• 1 GBPS LANs 419 Universities each having 400 nodes
• 155 Mbps MPLS-VPN connectivity to Universities till the 1 Gbps Link from NKN PoP reaches the University
• NMEICT-NKN Interconnection, 1GB each about 10-15 Locations
• Internet connectivity to BSNL VPN cloud.

• MIT – group of academic & research institutions – has become 1st group in western India to be part of National Knowledge Network through the national scheme "National Mission on Education through ICT ".
• Connected its two institutions viz. MIT – Technology and MIT Poly in BSNL cloud through 10,000,000 bits per second. ( Dated 20th Nov 2010 ).

MAJOR IMPACT

• 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. NKN will catalyze knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer between stakeholders seamlessly – that too across the nation and globally.

• NKN would enable use of specialized applications, which 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 NKN. Applications such as Countrywide Classrooms will address the issue of faculty shortage and ensure quality education delivery across the country.