Opinion - News Analysis   

India must quickly `light up' for science

T. Jayaraman

DESPITE ITS claim to the status of a software superpower, India stands virtually at the bottom of the world table when it comes to high-speed networking and digital connectivity dedicated to research and education. This is the conclusion of an international committee of scientists dedicated to the task of monitoring and promoting networking and connectivity initiatives for research communities across the world.

Using data from the worldwide passive monitoring of networks, the committee found that India lags at least ten years behind the world leaders, the United States and Western Europe. It is at least three to four years behind countries such as Brazil and China, and only two to three years ahead of the Central Asian Republics and Africa.

This gap, the committee warns, has been widening steadily and will worsen without urgent new initiatives. The urgency of the problem can be gauged by comparing the development of networking in Brazil and India over the past six years. While both countries had 1 megabit per second (Mbps) connectivity in 2000, the core of Brazil's research network today has 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) connectivity, the standard for high-speed networking in the United States and Europe. Indian science can currently muster only a maximum of 622 Mbps, an international link for demonstration purposes between the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Japan. Scientists at TIFR, Mumbai where the demonstration is currently situated are hopeful of making this a permanent link. Among the networks being planned or partially implemented, the National Grid Computing Initiative GARUDA — being implemented by the Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and the Educational and Research Network (ERNET) — envisages the fastest network speeds with100 Mbps as access bandwidth.

Harvey Newman, professor of physics at Caltech, USA, and the chair of the Standing Committee on Interregional Connectivity of the International Committee on Future Accelerators (ICFA-SCIC) that authored the report, presented this data in his lecture at the Sixth International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP06) currently being held at TIFR. Speaking to this writer after his presentation, Professor Newman said that there appeared to be no organisation in India charged with the mission of providing leading-edge high-speed bandwidth to education and research. China, on the other hand, handed over 30,000 km of `dark fibre' rolled out some years ago to CERNET, its educational and research network, to `light up.' This network is currently moving to a 10 Gbps backbone. This follows the worldwide trend of national education and research networks acquiring or moving to acquire `dark fibre' expressly for education and research purposes.

A senior Indian networking specialist agreed that the need for a dedicated, cutting-edge, high-performance research and education network, supported by government and industry, was not appreciated in India. This had led to a significantly lag of development of research network infrastructure in India, affecting support to science and engineering research and education. In response to a question about Indian ownership of a good fraction of international bandwidth, Professor Newman said the "available bandwidth does not mean just the size of the cable." Suitable equipment and installations were needed effectively to utilise the cable for actual connectivity that would be available for other organisations to service the users.

Professor Newman said the growth of connectivity also depended crucially on the business model in place for the pricing of bandwidth. If the goal was substantially to recover cable cost by charging the initial customers heavily, utilising only a small part of the capacity, then the explosive growth of digital connectivity seen elsewhere would not happen. A better model was one in which most of the capacity was available for use early, and research and educational users were encouraged to demonstrate the potential of the high available bandwidth. A suitable concessional tariff for the research and education sector would more than repay the concession in its contribution to development work and in the demonstration effect for the potential customer base.

Senior Indian high-energy physicists at the conference privately concurred with the assessment of their foreign colleagues on the inadequacy of networking for research and education in India. However, Professors Atul Gurtu and Sunanda Banerjee of TIFR were hopeful of starting a fresh chapter with the current negotiations for their 622 Mbps link through VSNL, which are likely to yield a price that would be competitive by international standards.

(The writer is a theoretical physicist currently visiting TIFR.)

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