National Knowledge Network (NKN)

What is National Knowledge Network (NKN)’?

• It is a network grid, by Government of India, to provide high speed internet connectivity among the Governmental, educational and research institutes, IITs and IIMs etc.
• It was started as a small programme in the Planning Commission in 2009
• NKN comprises of an ultra-high speed CORE (multiples of 10 Gbps). The Participating institutions at connect to the National Knowledge Network seamlessly at speeds of 1 Gbps or higher. (so theoretically, you can copy a movie DVD from New Delhi to Mumbai in less than 5 seconds via this “internet”.)

What are the uses of NKN?

• NKN is a computer network platform for delivering effective distance education where teachers and students can interact in real time.
• This is especially significant in a country like India where access to education is limited by factors such as geography, lack of infrastructure facilities etc.
• The network enables co-sharing of information such as classroom lectures, presentations and handouts among different institutions.
• The Virtual Library  enables sharing of journals, books and research papers across different institutions.
• NKN provides high speed backbone connectivity for e-governance infrastructure such as data centres at the national and state levels, and networks (SWANs). SWAN = State Wide Area Network – it joins various departments of the State Government.
• The NKN will also provide massive data transfer capabilities required for e-governance applications.
• It is enabling Indian scientists to take on big data challenges that earlier required weeks and months of high-power computing. Sifting through gene mutations for diseases or analysing the 30 million per second pictures from the Large Hadron Collider.
• from bio informatics researchers and medical experts to climate scientists and particle physicists.
• NKN, its resources and computing powers have so far proved useful in areas of brain research, nuclear reactor safety, search for drug targets and biodiversity research

Criticism of NKN

• Very few people are using the resources and computing power, and that the network bandwidth available is nothing compared to in the US, Europe, China and even Brazil.
• We have a knowledge highway but I don’t see enough people using the highway. The big research centres like the IITs and IISc (Indian Institute of Science) are already equipped with high-performance computing facilities and networks.
• We need to have students from universities around the country on the NKN network. Private industry is also needed.
• With the NKN in place, the government will not be sanctioning requests for funds to create smaller computing facilities at institutes and people will be directed to be a part of the network.