National Internet Backbone: The Implementation Model

There is

no denying that the no entry-barrier ISP licence regime, and

opening up of long-distance service for competition have set

the ball rolling for development of real infrastructure in the

communications industry. The most talked, and much awaited,

for whatever reason, has been the setting up a National Internet

Backbone (NIB)-the national broad-based access network that

provides nodes for Internet access throughout the country. The

NIB is supposed to act as a transmission media to carry the

Internet traffic-both government and private-to the nearest

international gateway.

DoT called

the tenders for NIB Phase I project in July last year. And several

major players such as Wipro with Sun Microsystems and Cisco,

Siemens with Sun and Bay Networks, Ericsson with Sun and Cisco,

RPG Cable with Sun and Cisco, Tata Lucent with Sun and Cisco

bid for the project. But the project, mired in several controversies,

got delayed, and finally the order went to Crompton Greaves

consortium.

NIB Objectives



The objective of the backbone is to provide convenient and easily
accessible Internet Access Points (IAPs) for DoT Internet Service

Providers (ISPs) as well as private ISPs so that they can connect

their Points of Presence (PoP) to the Internet. Presently 549

IAP stations are to be connected across the country.

According

to the recommendations of National IT Task Force, DoT shall

be opening Internet Access Nodes (IANs) with authorized ISPs

at all the district headquarters and local charging areas. In

addition to providing Internet access, the NIB will support

the ISP operations of the DoT by providing built-in ISP functionality

in its equipment placed at the IAPs of the NIB. The total operation

consists of a multi-tier structure of aggregation and connectivity

at three different levels.

The first

tier comprises the metropolitan and major cities (Type A) connected

by high-capacity links



to gateways. 14 cities have been recognized as Type A. Out of
these, six will have international gateway and the rest eight

will be without it. The second tier (Type B) consists of the

31 medium-sized towns and will be connected to the first tier

by medium capacity links. In all, 376 district headquarters

including small towns that comprise the third tier (Type C),

are planned to be connected through the second tier to the network

only in the final stage. Type C locations have been further

segregated into C I - 41, C II consisting of 87 cities and C

III.

The network

architecture for these stations is top-of-the-line with "Mesh

Topology" connecting the core A1 stations. The core backbone

is of 8 Mbps that can be upgraded to E3 or STM-1. Each of the

A2 station will be connected to two A1 stations with 2 Mbps

links, upgradable to E3. Each type B station is to be connected

to two A1 or A2 stations with 2 Mbps links. The type C station

will be connected to A1/A2 or B stations.The carrier

class equipment including routers, Remote Access Servers (RAS),

LAN switches, and application server with network management

system, help desks and billing system, offer a high degree of

redundancy.

Easy expansion,

scalability, and roaming will be a part of the network architecture.

NIB will

support access of Internet to the respective nodes through PSTN

and ISDN dial-up, leased-lines, and X.25. The private ISPs can

connect to NIB at 64 Kbps, n x 64 Kbps, n X 2 Mbps. In addition,

the DoT may offer a numbering scheme for Internet access. The

total capacity for Internet access has been planned for 300,000

customers and the dial-up customer base for RAS at each location

is planned with 480 DSP modems or 16 E1s at A Type and 120 modems

with 4 E1s at B type locations. It would also support roaming

facilities and have centralized management environment. While





the roaming facility supports the creation of transaction logs,
transmit user data between home ISP, local ISP, and the accounting

system, the Network Management System (NMS) provides the capability

to manage all servers, workstations, and inter-networking devices

connected to the network from a system control centre.

Role

of Crompton Greaves



The Informatics division of Crompton Greaves Ltd (CGL) is the
main system integrator in the project. Its expertise in consultancy,

networking, installation, and support enables it to not only

plan the network integration and installation, but also manage

and supervise the installation process across locations, train

DoT engineers on the installation and network services management

apart from providing support and maintenance.



In the first phase of the NIB, 45 stations will be connected
and depending upon the growth and traffic other B and C stations

will be included at a later stage.

All the

14 A stations will be connected-six (A1) stations with international

gateway and eight (A2)



stations without it. The 31 B stations will then be interconnected
through the 14 cities.

For easier

identification and focused approach to each location, the 45

locations spread across the country have been classified into

four geographical sectors by CGL.

Sector I

consists of the northern region, Sector II is the eastern region

that includes West Bengal, Orissa, Assam, and Meghalaya. While

the southern region consisting of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala,

and Andhra Pradesh has been identified as Sector III, that consisting

of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra are Sector IV. The

team having identified its strength and scope of the project

has further phased out the project into two sections.In the first

phase of the project, IAPs at five Type A cities-Delhi, Lucknow,

Calcutta, Bangalore, and Mysore will be installed. Implementation

in the other 40 cities will be taken up by the DoT. Site survey,

network layout, supply chain management of products, storage,

and dispatch of materials, installation, testing, and configuration

of the sites, validation and acceptance are elements involved

in each stage of the project.

All the

planning, scheduling and execution of the project has been done

in tandem with the DoT officials at each location. The DoT team

will be trained on servers, routers, access devices, LAN switches,

RAS, modems, software and other products that have gone into

the network.

CGL''s partners

in the project include Cisco, SGI, Lucent Technologies, RAD,

Remedy, Convergyx, and Compaq. At the time of going into print,

CGL has been working closely with DoT in finalizing, normalizing

various design and policy issues that need to be addressed so

that the country''s Internet backbone can evolve gracefully over

a period of time.