A very high-speed 'Science and Education Internet' is being connected to India through the international Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (GLORIAD) and the networking process will be completed in August this year, Dr Greg Cole, director and principal investigator 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 the International Thermonuclear Experimental Research (ITER), Large Hadron Collider and several small and big projects," Cole said.
Mumbai-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, that 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.
"We made the first connection with Russia in 1997-98 and later with China, Republic of Korea and five Nordic countries in Europe (Denmark, Finalnd, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) in 2004. But 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.
Tata Communications is providing various network services around the globe for GLORIAD including USD six million contribution to connect Amsterdam to Mumbai to Singapore to Hongkong, the Science and Education Internet Cole an ambitious engineer from Tennesse said adding, "I met Tata Communication CEO in 1997 and is a very committed.
Along with India, GLORIAD will also connect Egypt and Singapore, and we are also having discussions to connect to Saudi Arabia, he said.
"We have made commitment to 40 African countries and we hope that India also works with Africa in this high speed connectivity for the enhancement of science in the world," Cole said.
This connectivity to scientists and educational institutions will also permit access to shared scientific instrumentation 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.
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