India: Snapshot of Internet around 1990

2012.6/10.1/10.13

By Srinivasan Ramani

The Government of India, assisted by the United Nations Development Programme, launched the Education and Research Network (ERNET) project in 1986. The project funded R & D at eight collaborating institutions: National Centre for Software Technology (NCST), Dept of Electronics, Govt of India, five Indian Institutes of Technology and at the Indian Institute of Science. The eight coordinators were: Anurag Kumar, B N Jain, S L Maskara, S L Mehndiratta, S V Raghavan, S Ramakrishnan (Project Coordinator from DoE), S Ramani, and K R Srivathsan. This project carried out research (documented in over 150 papers and five books) and went on to create India’s first nation-wide computer network with international connectivity, serving Indian researchers and academics.

ERNET started UUCP email exchanges between NCST and IIT Bombay in 1986/87 and established TCP/IP connectivity between major cities in 1988. A TCP over X.25 connection was the first international link, set up in 1987. This connected India to the Internet through a router at CWI in Amsterdam. A TCP/IP link was commissioned to UUNET’s gateway in Falls Church, MD, in the US in 1988 using a dial-up link that worked round the clock. This dial-up link was replaced by an analogue leased line in 1989.

Inter-city connection within India took a major step forward in 1988, starting with leased lines connecting the ERNET Centre in Bombay with ERNET centres in Delhi and Madras. Links to other cities followed soon after. Initial use of these leased lines was for running UUCP, and in a year or two, Intercity leased lines of ERNET offered high enough bandwidth to run TCP/IP within India.

Nineties saw the induction of higher bandwidths for computer networking, beginning with the commissioning of a 64 Kbps digital leased line between the ERNET Centre in National Center for Software Technology(NCST), Bombay and UUNET, Falls Church, VA, USA, in 1992. The bandwidth used for Internet access expanded at an exponential rate over the years. Nineties also saw the induction of VSATs with IP interfaces for routine Internet access from institutions in small towns and rural areas. ERNET pioneered the use of this technology, installing a major satellite communication hub in Bangalore in 1993 with the cooperation of Software Technology Parks of India, along with VSATs in dozens of educational institutions in remote areas. This technology remains relevant to this day (2012), with ERNET continuing to expand its VSAT network.

ERNET made a major contribution through the development of human resources, educating engineering students in large numbers. Institutions running ERNET centres gained valuable experience and passed it on to the economy. Over a dozen PhD dissertations and a large number of Masters’ dissertations in networking technology came out during the nineties. The students involved went on to work in companies and other institutions, spreading the expertise.

When the first international connection was set up in 1988, NCST had been asked to serve as the domain registrar for issuing domain names to other institutions in India. ERNET was allotted the Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by InterNIC in 1990. Subsequently Class C addresses were allotted to ERNET by APNIC. ERNET continued to handle this domain registration function for all Indian users till 2004, and continues to handle registrations for ‘ac.in’ and ‘res.in’ domains to this day. An autonomous society funded by the Govt of India was set up in 1998 to carry on with ERNET activities. A new terrestrial high speed backbone for ERNET was set up in 1999-2000. ERNET now serves over 1300 institutions.

A commercial service offering TCP/IP connectivity to the world was introduced by a company, VSNL Ltd., in 1995; VSNL was a government owned company at that time. Major developments followed soon after this, due to de-regulation in the telecom sector. A Telecom Regulatory Authority of India was created in 1997, and private Internet Service Providers were licensed starting from Nov 1998. There were 315 ISPs by March 31, 2000. The number of Internet Access Subscribers was only a little over 366,000 at that time. It is worth noting that broadband access to the Internet for individual consumers did not become available in India during the nineties. The tremendous growth in Internet usage after 2000 is a different story to be told elsewhere!

The first mobile telecommunication service was started in 1995. It was believed that there would be wide-spread Internet usage over the cellular network, but it must be said that the percentage of Indian cell phone users who were using their cell phones for Internet access remained quite small up to 2000.

The Internet has enabled and supported the growth of the software industry in India. Software development and IT enabled services have grown rapidly, making a significant contribution to India’s economy.