New Delhi: The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure has accorded in principle approval for the establishment National Knowledge Network (NKN).

The knowledge network is planned to be implemented by the NIC and will inter-connect all knowledge institutions trough high speed data communication network.

NKN would encourage sharing of knowledge, specialised resources and collaborative research among scientists, researchers 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 for creating intellectual property.

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

The architecture of the NKN will be scalable and 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 NKN at speeds of 1 Gbps or to the distribution layer through a last mile connectivity bandwidth.

The NKN will provide nation-wide ultra high-speed backbone/data-network highway. Various other networks in the country can take advantage of this ultra high-speed backbone, with national and international reach to create independent and closed user groups.

In the initial phase a core Backbone consisting of 15 PoPs have been established with 2.5 Gbps capacity and around 40 institutions of higher learning and advanced research have been connected to the network with 6 virtual classrooms setup.

The NKN will have about 25 core Point of Presence (PoPs) and 600 secondary PoPs. It will connect around 1,500 Institutions. The physical infrastructure (setting up of core network) is expected to be completed in a span of 24 months.

NKN is focusing on health, education, grid computing, agriculture and e-Governance. Applications such as Countrywide Classrooms will address the issue of faculty shortage and ensure quality education delivery across the country.
 
The government announced setting up NKN in 2008-09 and an initial amount of Rs 100 crore was allocated to the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT for establishment.
—iGovernment Bureau