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In its short life, Internet has
become an agent of revolutionary change and is one
of the fastest tools to promote and defend freedom
and to facilitate democratic access to information
and knowledge. It has emerged as today’s greatest
instruments of progress and has gradually become a
part of the vital infrastructure of global social,
economic, cultural and political life. The
Internet’s effect on our lives is pervasive. Over
the past decade, the use of e-mail, the web and
blogs have become part of the daily routine of more
than a billion Internet users.
Today the Internet access touch
points have outgrown the traditional PC based
Internet browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox) to
desktop applications, mobile phones and satellite
navigational devices in vehicles and living rooms.
More and more people are buying movie tickets, air
tickets, travel pacakages, railway tickets, paying
bills online.
Online gaming is projected to
increase by 141% by 2011 in the Asia Pacific Region
and mobile gaming to increase by 119% by a leading
gaming industry. Very soon we will see the dawn of
the video age when video will be used for buying,
communicating, learning and socializing. Online chat
and blogs is reducing the gap between private and
public life of the present generation. Cyber cafes
have taken over pubs and bars for socializing in
spite of the opposing forces of regional borders,
copyright, censorship, network blocking, etc.
On the Flip Side
The internet revolution is yet to happen in India,
like the way it has happened with cell phones and
cable TV. While it’s common to see everyone from
auto drivers to senior citizens with cell phones,
you will rarely find an auto driver who visits a
cyber cafe to check his email. This has to do with
opportunity cost involved in spending time in cyber
cafes and most importantly the lack of services to
target a large part of India. The Internet too
largely uses (ASCII) American Standard Code for
Information Interchange. This alienates many
communities from the boon of computers and Internet.
The fact remains that most of
India’s billion people are denied access to the
Internet–and not only because they don’t have a
connection or a computer. The digital revolution is
leaving them behind because they don’t speak
English, the dominant language of the Web.
Even if there is room for further growth among
English-language users in India, far greater growth
could be unleashed. Hindi is the world’s third or
fourth most widely spoken language. Yet it is not
even in the top 10 languages on the Internet,
according to InternetWorldStats.com. A recent trend
of regional content is preferred by more and more
Internet users.
It is recognized that the content
has to be in a language that is understood by many
users. In the internet space, this is highly
unbalanced currently. 12 out of 6000 popular
languages spoken globally account for 98% of web
content, with English most prominent among them.
Worldwide efforts are on to provide user-friendly
tools for language independent search and retrieval,
and machine translation of text from English to
another language and vice-versa.
Dearth of content in other Indian languages could
limit the growth of the number of Internet users in
the country as growth is almost saturating among
English speaking users in India. Between 5 and 10
percent of India’s population speaks English.
(Estimates of the number of English speakers in
India vary widely from 5 percent of the population,
or 50 million people, all the way to more than 30
percent, or 350 million people). Internet
proliferation is difficult within the limited domain
of English language content.
A multilingual Internet will
increase local interest in Internet content and
increase the possibilities for all language groups
to share and access information in their own
language.
The challenges in increasing local content include
the standardization of fonts and Internationalized
domain names, an issue the Indian government is
already working on. There needs to be relevant
content in local languages (price of crops for
farmers, weather conditions for fisherman etc) to
see use of the internet in rural India. Some small
steps are being taken to increase local language
content but it is too early to say whether they have
in any way spurred Internet usage.
Different internet products in
India have different audiences, a good portion of
Indian net users are still constrained by what the
Indian net has meant to them: thus far,
everything-in-one portals such as Rediff and Sify.
In the context of entertainment, lifestyle and
recreational activities, local language versions
have a niche market.
Local language newspapers have
gone online, webduniya.com offers content in Hindi,
Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam and a government-led
project Vidyavahini, which aims to use the Internet
to train teachers and provide educational materials
on the Internet, plans to develop content in Hindi,
Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali, in addition to
English.
Tomorrows Internet -
Internet2.0
The incubator for many of the emerging technologies
shaping the future is known as Internet2. Formed in
1996 and administered by the University Corporation
for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), Internet2
is a partnership between universities, corporations
and government agencies to create new applications
that can’t run over the existing Internet and to
develop the infrastructure that supports those
applications.
The Internet2 Network’s physical implementation is
made up of several robust, logically different, but
related networks, each on its own overlaid
infrastructure. These networks include:
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Advanced IP network (provided
by Juniper routers)
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Dynamic Circuit network
(provided by the multiservice switching
capabilities of the Ciena Core Directors
-
Core optical network
(provided by the Infinera platform)
IP Network
The IP network is built across a carrier-class
infrastructure and supports leading edge IPv4, IPv6,
multicast, and other advanced networking protocols,
as well as the ability to more easily and flexibly
increase its capacity beyond any other R&E network
in the world.
Dynamic Circuit Network
This is a completely new service that realizes the
community’s vision of hybrid (IP and dynamic
circuit) networking. The Internet2 Dynamic Circuit
(DC) Network is a network unlike any other before
it. It uses community-developed, standards-based
technologies and protocols to provide on-demand
dedicated optical paths between endpoints. Just as
the R&E community led the way in expanding the reach
and capabilities of packet networking using the IP
and TCP protocols decades ago, the DC Network breaks
new ground to provide the U.S. research and
education community dedicated, customizable,
on-demand bandwidth.
Services enabled by the DC
Network include short-term, point-to-point circuits,
setup by the requestor or application in standard
SONET bandwidth increments up to 10 Gbps. The DC
Network is based upon the connections into the Ciena
Core Directors and use of control plane software. A
variety of control plane software is under
development, building on the work of the OSCARS and
DRAGON projects, with the goal of enabling automated
reservations.
Static Circuit Services
Internet2 WaveCo provides a unified service for
Internet2 members looking for long-term, static,
point-to-point circuits to cost-effectively extend
their network connectivity. Circuits are provisioned
either by Internet2 over the Internet2-controlled
optical infrastructure or by Level 3 Communications,
on their nationwide footprint.
Commercial Peering Service - More Performance,
Less Cost
Commercial Peering (CP) service is included in the
base connection fee, so it is available for
Internet2 Network connectors at no additional cost.
Internet2 is a not a single network, but a
consortium of hundreds of high-speed networks linked
by fiber optic backbones that span the United States
and links to other countries. The network transmits
data at speeds up to 2.4 gigabits per second—45,000
times faster than a 56 Kbps modem— allowing
scientists to test their laboratory discoveries in
the real world.
The next-generation network went
online in February, 1999, linking a number of
universities around the world. It should be
available for commercial use soon. Then get ready
for 21st century services like interactive
television, virtual 3-D videoconferencing, and much
more.
High-speed networks will make it possible for
professionals to work in ways never before possible.
For instance, scientists around the world can share
specialized equipment like electron microscopes.
Today, Virtual Collaborative
Clinics connects medical facilities allowing doctors
to manipulate high-resolution, 3-D images of MRI
scans and other medical imaging. Not only can
doctors consult and diagnose, but they can simulate
surgery by using a “CyberScalpel.” Virtual surgery
gives surgeons an opportunity to practice before
even entering the operating room, reducing the time
required for the actual procedure. Using this kind
of virtual technology, local hospitals can access
resources and skills only available at larger
institutions. The technology may soon be used to
provide remote health care to astronauts on extended
space journeys.
A New Kind of Web
While PCs were once the primary means of accessing
the Internet, we’re now seeing Internet-enabled
devices such as PDAs and cell phones that send and
receive e-mail and access the Web. Soon, everything
from your car to your refrigerator will be connected
to the global network, communicating with each other
wirelessly.
Electrolux, best known for its vacuum cleaners, has
developed the ScreenFridge, an Internet refrigerator
that manages your pantry, among other things. It
e-mails a shopping list to your local supermarket
and coordinates a convenient delivery time with your
schedule. Say hello to a brave, new world. (PIB
Features)
*Additional Director General (M & C), PIB, Delhi
** With technical inputs from Department of
Information Technology
PIB
Aizawl |
