Why is it in news?

India's National Knowledge Network and Sri Lanka's LEARN which connect to educational institutions between the two countries have now been linked with each other through high capacity internet

Details

• Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is on an official visit to Sri Lanka, inaugurated the connectivity between the two networks.
• The law minister inaugurated the gigabit connectivity between the National Knowledge Network of India and LEARN network of Sri Lanka. This dedicated high speed internet connectivity will boost the collaboration among the academic institutions of India and Sri Lanka.
• Both countries signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for enhancing cooperation between India and Sri Lanka in the IT sector, cyber security and eGovernance. On this occasion, the Minister also inaugurated the use of eOffice software developed by National Informatics Center (NIC) by the government of Sri Lanka.

About NKN

• National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a multi-gigabit NREN, whose purpose is to provide a unified high speed network backbone for educational institutions in India.
• The NKN is a hierarchical network divided into three basic layers – ultra-high speed CORE (multiples of 10 Gbit/s; Level 1), Distribution (Level 2), and Edge (speeds of 1 Gbit/s or higher; User Level). Depending on the type of connectivity required by the user organization, geographical presence, and the location of Point of Presence (PoP) of NKN, (belonging to Core and Distribution), connectivity would be provided to the institutes. NKN backbone will typically have 18 Core PoPs and around 25 Distribution PoPs across the country. The NKN backbone will be created by multiple bandwidth providers and the edges can be provided by any service provider.
• The network is designed to support Overlay Networks, Dedicated Networks, and Virtual Networks. Advanced applications in areas such as Health, Education, Science & Technology, Grid Computing, Bioinformatics, Agriculture, and Governance will be an integral part of NKN. The entire network will seamlessly integrate with the global scientific community at multiple gigabits per second speed.
• NKN aims to connect all universities, research institutions, libraries, laboratories, healthcare and agricultural institutions across the country to improve access to knowledge and meet communication and computational need of the institutions.
• NKN has already connected over 1,648 institutions under various categories throughout the country.

Source

The New Indian Express