Cabinet gives green signal to National Knowledge Network

New Delhi, Mar 25 (ANI): The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure (CCI) on Thursday approved the establishment of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) with an outlay of Rs.5990 crore to be implemented by the National Information Centre (NIC) over a period of ten years.

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 the sharing of knowledge, specialized resources and collaborative research.

The Government's decision to set up such a National Knowledge Network was announced by the Finance Minister in the Budget speech of 2008-09.

An initial amount of Rs.100 crore for the fiscal 2008-09 was allocated to the Department of Information Technology, for establishing the National Knowledge Network.

The architecture of the National Knowledge Network will be scalable and the network will consist of an ultra-high speed core (multiples of 10 Gbps 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 1 Gbps or to the distribution layer through a last mile connectivity bandwidth.

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

The NKN will catalyse knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer between stakeholders seamlessly - that too across the nation and globally. NKN is expected to encourage a larger section of research and educational institutions to create intellectual property.

The NKN would enable use of specialized applications, which allow sharing of high performance computing facilities, e-libraries, virtual classrooms and very large databases. (ANI)