India to get high-speed 'Science and Education Internet'

Mumbai: India will be connected to a very high-speed 'Science and Education Internet' through an international networking by next month, a senior official of the network said.

"The new very high speed linkage will be completed next month which will allow National Knowledge network-connected institutions' high-speed access to global science projects such as International Thermonuclear Experimental Research (ITER), Large Hadron Collider and several small and big projects," Director and Principal Investigator of Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (GLORIAD), Greg Cole said. The connectivity will permit scientists and educational institutions to have access to shared scientific equipment such as telescopes, electron microscopes and particle accelerators. It will also bring to local computers important and enormous scientific data repositories spanning everything from human genomics to social science datasets, to astronomy archives to earth landsat imagery and many more. City-based Tata Institute of fundamental Research (TIFR) is hosting all GLORIAD network equipment in India.

"It is through the partnership with the National Knowledge Network (NKN), TIFR, Tata Communications and the US National Science Foundation, the NKN will be connected to GLORIAD- a special global science and education network ringing the northern hemisphere of the earth through optical fibre and connecting millions of scientists and students for advanced global scientific collaboration-in ways unimagined only a few years ago," Cole said. He was speaking at the Observer Research Foundation here last night. "The connectivity with India's NKN is very exciting as it is already linking various science and education institutions across India at Gigabit per second speeds, creating an advanced network for those dedicated to science," he said.Cole said GLORIAD first connected with Russia in 1997-98 and later with China, Republic of Korea and five Nordic countries in Europe (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) in 2004.

Along with India, GLORIAD will also connect Egypt and Singapore, he said, adding "we are also having discussions to connect to Saudi Arabia."