Ongoing R&D projects

Wide area 'Quality of Service Network Testbed'

"Bringing Europe's electronics infrastructure to expanding frontiers"

Setting up of vocational centers for skill creation for the disabled children in the area of Information Technology

Planet Lab test bed

EU-India Grid

GEANT

GARUDA

Community Information Centres - Vidyavahini (CIC-VVs)

Mobile IPv6 

R&D projects Undertaken during the last four years

ASEAN India Digital Archive

Instruction on Demand

NETMASTER (Bandwidth manager)

Network Monitoring Tool (NMT)

Establishment of IPv6 enabled test bed at ERNET

1

 Wide area 'Quality of Service Network Testbed' http://www.qosnet.ernet.in

The objective of this research to provide QoS assurances to applications those require assured bandwidth from end-to-end, communication privacy, minimal round time for packet delivery, regularity of the data flow. This testbed will be interconnected with the local testbed at other locations in the country. Therefore it will serve as a vehicle among other institutions to carry out R&D and distance learning. This testbed will be integrated with ERNET2(ERNET version of Internet2).

The focus of research will be Intserv (Integrated services), DiffServ (Differenciated services), RSVP and MPLS architecture & Traffic Engineering. The advantages of statistical multiplexing ie flexible bandwidth paradigm for QoS sensitive application is also to be investigated.

The R&D also aims to develop QoS sensitive applications and platform for multimedia communication (VoIP, MPEG video), interactive distance learning-virtual class room, digital library, real-time robotic/ process control, and telemedicine, secure & scalable IP multicasting platform.

This QoS enabled Network will be made open to industries, academia for testing their products for distance learning, digital library, and deliver of multimedia communications.

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2

"Bringing Europe's electronics infrastructure to expanding frontiers" (BELIEF) under (FP6 IST Programme) http://www.beliefproject.org/

The 'BELIEF' is an infrastructure Research proposal for development of reliable and robust Grid infrastructure worldwide. The participants of the project are: Metaware S.P.A. Corso Italy, ERNET India, CNR-ISTI ITALY, University of Athens, ENGITECH Ireland, PUSP Brazil, and Wisconsin - Madison University US .The duration of the project is two years (2005)
The main objectives of BELIEF are:

	To build and promote an effective Communication network Platform to forge alliances between academics & industries;
	To identify key application areas on grid-based and other 'electronic infrastructures'.
	To identify the main technological and other challenges in bringing electronic infrastructures to serve the corresponding applications.
	To develop, maintain and populate a Multimedia Digital Library;
	To deliver Network Workshops, and participate & organize conferences, exchange knowledge;
	To publish technical report relating to research issues, polarizing the interests of the GRID infrastructure etc;
	Attract and develop relationship with Industry community to bring them on GRID platform

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3

 Setting up of vocational centers for skill creation for the disabled children in the area of Information Technology

The project is designed for inculcating the computer literacy, enhancing the skills and providing job-oriented training to the disabled children to obtain employment in the IT and IT enabled service industry.

	Following Courses for inculcating the computer literacy, enhancing the skills and providing job-oriented training to the disabled children to obtain employment in the IT and IT enabled service industry. Computer Operation & Access Technology Computer Application & Access Technology Special course on IT Enabled Service industry-Call Centre/BPO.
	The 18 ICT vocational centers have already been established in Tamil Nadu and Delhi for blind and deaf students
	The computer lab at the vocational centre equipped with computers/Server, Brail Printer; Scanner Screen Reader, Specialized software - Web Software, CCTV with Screen Magnifier for blind, listening devices for deaf and 256Kbps Internet connectivity
	M/s Ability Foundation, Chennai has been engaged to train the teachers and students of the school in Tamil Nadu as well as children from nearby areas of schools. The ability foundation has already initiated training of teachers from schools for disabled from April 2006.

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4

 Planet Lab test bed

ERNET India has joined Intel Planet Lab test bed, which is an open, globally distributed test-bed for developing and accessing planetary scale network service. The test bed is available to ERNET for carrying out experiments in network services and applications.

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5

 EU-India Grid http://www.euindiagrid.eu/

The "EU- India Grid" project aims at interconnecting the Grid infrastructure in Europe (EGEE) and India for the benefit of eScience applications. This common grid infrastructure will be dedicated to support data processing for some application areas where strong collaborations are already operating The 'EU-India Grid' project aims at interconnecting the Grid infrastructure in Europe (EGEE) and India for the benefit of Science applications. This common grid infrastructure will be dedicated to support data processing for some application areas where strong collaborations are already operating between Europe and India and promote the use of Grid technologies among new user communities in research and industry. This proposal is under process at EU.

The project proposal is to be implemented by a consortium of EU partners and Indian partners. The consortium is a healthy mixture of European and Indian partners with complementary expertise in the areas of Grid infrastructure, QoS, IPv6 (next generation networks). The members of the consortium are "Institute Nazionale di Fisica Nuclear, ITALY", "Metaware, PA, ITALY", "GARR, ITALY", "International Centre for Theoretical Physics", "Cambridge University, UK", "SAHA Institute Calcutta, India".

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6

 GEANT

ERNET is connecting with European Research Network GEANT through 45 Mbps International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC ) through its POP at CDAC, Mumbai. The connectivity will be mainly used for collaborative research with CERN, Geneva in the field of high energy physics. ERNET has signed a MOU with DST & TIFR. As per the MOU, ERNET will provide bandwidth to different institutes and universities for accessing the GEANT.

There are two projects named CMS, ALICE going on between Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science & Technology on Large Hydron Collider (LHC) with CERN, Geneva. Tier-2 Center of LHC are TIFR, Mumbai and VECC Kolkata. It is proposed to provide 34Mbps bandwidth each to TIFR, Mumbai and VECC, Kolkata from CDAC, Mumbai. These circuits are proposed to be commissioned by 7th June 2006. It is also proposed to provide 34 Mbps bandwidth between BARC, Mumbai and TIFR Mumbai.

Two groups of universities are to be connected on VPN based on the project they are working such as ALICE, CMS and their traffic will be landing either at TIFR, Mumbai or VECC Kolkata as per the requirement.

The 45 Mbps IPLC will be upgraded to 64 Mbps, 155 Mbps and 622 Mbps in future based on the requirement.

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7

 GARUDA

GARUDA is a collaboration of science researchers and experimenters on a nation wide grid of computational nodes, mass storage and scientific instruments that aims to provide the technological advances required to enable data and compute intensive science for the 21st century. One of GARUDA's most important challenges is to strike the right balance between research and the daunting task of deploying that innovation into some of the most complex scientific and engineering endeavors being undertaken today.

The proposal for GARUDA project was submitted by CDAC to DIT. DIT has directed ERNET to set up communication fabric for GARUDA. Nation-wide computational grid 'GARUDA' will connect 45 institutions in 17 cities across the country. The GARUDA network is a Layer 3 MPLS Virtual Private Network {VPN} connecting selected institutions at 10/100 Mbps with stringent quality and Service Level Agreements. It provides high-speed and seamless access to supercomputers and also enables creation and management of dynamic virtual collaborations and organizations.

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8

 Community Information Centres - Vidyavahini (CIC-VVs) 

7. Community Information Centres - Vidyavahini (CIC-VVs) are being setup in the government schools located in Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep Islands with dual purpose of imparting ICT based education and training as well as for providing Citizen centric services to the people of the region. The centers will enable schools to access Internet applications, e-content, distance education and video multicasting. The project will facilitate various services such as e-procurement, grievance redressal, weather information etc. Under this project 71 nos. of CIC-VV sites will be setup. There are 41 Schools in Andaman & Nicobar Islands and 30 Schools in Lakshadweep Islands.

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9

 Mobile IPv6 

Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) allows an IPv6 node to be mobile-to arbitrarily change its location on the IPv6 Internet-and still maintain existing connections. Connection maintenance for mobile nodes is not done by modifying connection-oriented protocols such as TCP, but by handling the change of addresses at the Internet layer using Mobile IPv6 messages and options and processes that ensure the correct delivery of data regardless of the mobile node's location.

Mobile IPv6 allows an IPv6 node to be mobile-to arbitrarily change its location on an IPv6 network-and still maintain existing connections. When an IPv6 node changes its location, it might also change its link. When an IPv6 node changes its link, its IPv6 address might also change in order to maintain connectivity. There are mechanisms to allow for the change in addresses when moving to a different link, such as stateful and stateless address auto configuration for IPv6. However, when the address changes, the existing connections of the mobile node that are using the address assigned from the previously connected link cannot be maintained and are ungracefully terminated.

The key benefit of Mobile IPv6 is that even though the mobile node changes locations and addresses, the existing connections through which the mobile node is communicating are maintained. To accomplish this, connections to mobile nodes are made with a specific address that is always assigned to the mobile node, and through which the mobile node is always reachable. Mobile IPv6 provides Transport layer connection survivability when a node moves from one link to another by performing address maintenance for mobile nodes at the Internet layer.

Objective of the Project:

	Inter-operability testing of IPv6 enabled Cisco Routers with Juniper Routers.
	Test the basic IPv6 mobility. Create and maintain an issue list that is generated on the basis of testing.
	Test Mobile IPv6 deployment and transition issues in the presence of IPv4/IPv6 networks.
	To develop, maintain and populate a Multimedia Digital Library;
	Test the Mobile IPv6 functionality for data and VoIP applications in LAN environment WiFi environment and WiMax environment.

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(during the last four years)

1

ASEAN India Digital Archive Web site

As an outcome of the fourth ASEAN Science and Technology week (FASTW) held in Bangkok in August 1995, a time bound project on Multimedia in Education was agreed for implementation as a collaborative effort between ASEAN countries and India and the project was called ASEAN-India Digital Archive (AIDA).

The objective of this collaborative project was to develop a multi-lingual and multi-cultural "ASEAN-India Digital archive" which consists of fonts, text, voices of common words, phrases, pictures, video and sample courseware from each of the countries in the ASEAN-India region. This archive should be accessible via the World Wide Web. People can use elements in this archive to reduce time and effort in developing courseware. Apart from India, other countries participating in the project are Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei.

Under the project, 231  culture specific words were identified by  Thailand and distributed to all concerned countries for content development.  India  has completed the entire development of Multimedia Elements associated with the 231 words and submitted the same to Thailand. This involved development of around 1450 Multimedia Elements in Hindi (Indian official language). The elements comprise of  text, voices of common words, phrases, pictures, and video.

Anticipated benefits of this digital archive are as follows :

• Help teachers and students to quickly develop a courseware

• Promote multi-lingual courseware development and their marketability in ASEAN-India region.

• Teach people about languages and culture in the ASEAN-India region.

Considering the successful completion of phase-I, it was proposed and approved to extend the activity to phase-II with the following objectives :  

• Enhance the usefulness of output of AIDA from Phase-I

• Promote the development of multimedia digital archives in the ASEAN-India regions to form AIDA's network

• Enhance the multimedia development skill for people in ASEAN countries

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2

Instruction on Demand

• A distance learning tool developed jointly with IISc Bangalore

• Prepares and delivers on-line and stored lectures over a TCP/IP network.

• Can work on dial up connectivity as it requires low bandwidth
  

3

NETMASTER (Bandwidth manager) 

• Developed jointly with IISc Bangalore

• Helps to observe and analyze traffic flowing on the access link.

• Technology transferred to Japanese company.

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4

Network Monitoring Tool

Internet has seen exponential growth in the last decade. It has become a preferred medium for exchange of information across the world. Effectiveness of communication over Internet has also attracted criminal elements in using this for cyber crime. With the increase of usage of Internet and cyber crime, the need to monitor the traffic especially against unwanted content also increased with time. The Internet is used by anti-social elements as a tool against legitimate usage of Internet.
Network Monitoring Tool (NMT) has been developed by ERNET India and IIT Kanpur for monitoring the illegal and unauthorized communication leading to cyber crime over Internet. The NMT will be used to collect specific information from Internet and reconstruct the same into a readable format. The data collected can be used by the investigating agencies for the purpose of evidence collection against any unlawful activities over Internet.

The tool operates in a non-intrusive manner and is capable of monitoring all packets passing through a link without injecting any data into the network. It captures information based on source/destination IP addresses, port numbers, login IDs, e-mails headers like - subject of messages, e-mail address, URLs, and text string etc.

The focus area of the research was to investigate the Internet packet capturing, filtering algorithms, encoding of packets, data communication through serial port for secure and dedicated remote control and performance measurement etc.

NMT was deployed and tested at ERNET POP and handed over to CBI for field trials. Capabilities of NMT were presented to a delegation from Cabinet Secretariat and senior DIT officials. Members showed interest in the product and the capabilities developed in the process.

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5

Establishment of IPv6 enabled test bed at ERNET  http://www.ipv6.ernet.in/

The Internet is a global network of networks connecting millions of users worldwide via many computer networks using standard common addressing system and communications protocol called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). The growth of the applications like VoIP, video conferencing, multi-user games need IP addresses globally scoped, unique and routable. Also, communications technologies need permanent connection to the Internet include cellular mobile phones, Radio/TV (set-top box), industrials devices, and any other electronics device (walkman to download MPs files, bulgur alarm to send e-mail to the policy station, etc.)This means that IP is a primary vehicle for a vast array of client/server and peer- to peer communications, and the current scale of deployment is straining many aspects of its twenty-year old design.

IPv6, the new version of the Internet Protocol designed as the successor to IP version 4 (IPv4) [RFC-791]. The changes from IPv4 to IPv6 fall primarily into the following categories:

1. Larger Address Space - 128 bit addressing
2. Plug and Play - Autoconfiguration
3. Auto Neighbour Discovery
4. Aggregation of Routes - Supernetting & Subnetting
5. Better IP Header Management
6. Quality of Service (QOS) - Flow Labelling Capability
7. Inbuilt Security feature - Authentication and privacy

Objective of the Project:

- Establishment of IPv6 Test Bed over ERNET Backbone.
- Setting of Domain Name Server and Mail Server on IPv6 at Point of Presences (POP) of ERNET.
- Running of Mail Services between ERNET POPs using IPv6.

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