National Knowledge Network gets nod

The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure (CCI) chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday gave in principle approval for setting up a National Knowledge Network (NKN) that would encourage sharing of knowledge, specialised resources and collaborative research.

About 1,500 institutions across the country will now be connected to the high speed data communication network.

The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has recommended establishment of the NKN to interconnect all knowledge institutions through high speed data communication network, Urban Development Minister S Jaipal Reddy told newspersons.

The government, while announcing its decision to set up such a forum, in 2008-09 had allocated an initial amount of Rs 100 crore to the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT for this purpose.

The architecture of the NKN, which will be implemented by the National Informatics Centre, will be scalable and the network will consist of an ultra-high speed core (multiples of 10Gbps and upwards).

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, a background paper says.