ERNET (Education and Research Network) has made a significant contribution to the emergence of networking in the country. It practically brought the Internet to India and has built up national capabilities in the area of net-working, especially in protocol software engineering. It has not only succeeded in building a large network that provides various facilities to the intellectual segment of Indian society--the research and education community, it has over the years become a trendsetter in the field of networking. UNDP has lauded ERNET as one of the most successful programmes it has funded. The Govt. of India has committed itself to further strengthen the project by including it in the 9th Plan with the allocation of funds and by creation of a new organisational set-up in the form of a Society. The Science community of the country has also recognized ERNET's contribution--both for infrastructure services as well as for R&D. The Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet has adopted ERNET as the platform for launching an S&T network in the country.


 

ERNET was initiated in 1986 by the Department of Electronics (DoE), with funding support from the Government of India and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), involving eight premier institutions as participating agencies--NCST (National Centre for Software Technology) Bombay, IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Bangalore, five IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) at Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras, and the DoE, New Delhi. ERNET began as a multi protocol network with both the TCP/IP and the OSI-IP protocol stacks running over the leased-line portion of the backbone. Since 1995,however, almost all traffic is carried over TCP/IP.

	ERNET operations, i.e. providing state-of-the-art communication infrastructure and services to Academic and Research institutions, Govt. organisations, NGOs, private sector R&D organisations, and various other non-commercial organisations;
	Research and development;
	Training and Consultancy;
	Content development.

Foundation of national capability building in the area of computer networking laid through : 

	Setting up of a chain of core groups at the participating agencies with a minimal setof lab facilities and creation of skilled manpower to carry out R&D.
	Generating man power at different levels.
	Making the world of standards (TCP/IP, OSI etc.) well understood.
	Providing an insight into emerging issues such as ATM networks, networked multi-media, and information infrastructure.

Network infrastructure and services set up, including :

	Installation, maintenance and operation of large Campus LANs.
	Design, commissioning and testing of SATWAN hub and the installation of VSATs.
	Seamless interconnection of LAN-WAN segments, & multi-protocol capability provided.
	Provision of the whole range of Internet services.
	Deployment of TDM/TDMA based VSAT network for Internet access .

Research & Development :
Research and Development in the area of computer networking has been the forte of ERNET.