Introduction to Ernet

Education and Research Network (ERNET) India is an organization under the aegis of Department of Electronics and IT, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Govt. of India. ERNET as an organisation has made a significant contribution to the emergence of networking in the country. At the inception time, it brought the Internet to India and has supported in building up national capabilities in the area of net-working, especially in protocol software engineering and tools for collaboration. Over a period of years, it has successfully built a large network that provides various services to the intellectual segment of Indian society i.e the research and education community and also supported creation of pool of strongly trained manpower.

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. However since 1995, almostall traffic is carried over TCP/IP.ERNET touches limitless sectors, serving numerous institutions in health, agriculture, primary, secondary andhigher education, science & technology and is involved in enhancing the computer skills of the children by means of deployment of Wi-Fi for internet access and building virtual classrooms which it intends to replicate in larger perspective under the digital India initiative.

ERNET is one of the large nationwide terrestrial and satellite network with point of presence located at the premiere educational and research institutions in major cities of the country. Focus of ERNET is not limited to just providing connectivity, but to meet the entire needs of the educational and research institutions by hosting and providing relevant information to their users. Research and Development and Training are integral parts of ERNET activities.

The activities at ERNET India are organized around five technology focus areas:

· National Academic and Research Network

· Research and Development in the area of Data Communication and its Application

· Human Resource Development in the area of High-end Networking

· e-Education infra

· Campus-wide High Speed Local Area Network

ERNET India was also involved in various R & D Projects spanning the wide domain of cloud based e-learning services, 6LoWPAN (Low –power Wireless Personal Area Network) and Internet of Things (IoT) technology in agriculture and water quality use cases. ERNET India contributes as a nodal agency for IPv6 Applications, consultancy, educational services in many domains and also working as an exclusive registrar three domain i.e ac. in, res.in and edu.in. ERNET India has successfully hosted several workshops and IPv6 hands-on trainings, and continues to provide it at various locations. ERNET has also geared up to provide consultancy services in the field of IPv6 infrastructure development and implementation. ERNET also successfully carried out research experiments using the ‘White Spaces’ in TV based at Srikakulam district , Andhra Pradesh where ERNET has also executed a project for providing connectivity and ICT infrastructure to 204 schools.

As part of this experiment, Wi-Fi connectivity was also provided to nearby locations.