HEC launches advanced research network

ISLAMABAD (PPI) - The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has now launched the advanced Pakistan Education and Research Network (PERN) which has been connected to other global Research & Education Networks (RENs), viz the Internet2 of USA, Asia-Pacific Advanced Network of continents of Asia and Australia, and GEANT2 network of National RENs of European countries.
This link is a result of joint efforts of the HEC and the National Science Foundation of USA who equally co-funded a dedicated link from PERN to Internet2.
The PERN now has a total R&E link capacity of 155 Mbps and it is now leading in South Asia being three times bigger than the linking capacity of India’s Education & Research Network (ERNet) which is connected to global R&E network over a 45 Mbps link.
Through this connectivity, academicians and researchers would be directly connected to other peer RENs, resulting in lesser delays and low latency with add on features of security and high performance for the specialized and time sensitive activities, like simulations on distributed resources, telemedicine and video conferencing, remote instrumentation, etc. Moreover, universities/ institutes now have access to the large contents and research resources available with the constituent academic and research institutions in RENs in advanced countries.
These include free online educational multimedia-on-demand, online library resources, access to supercomputing and grid nodes, collaborative tools, digital heritage, test bed for the future internet design, advanced network services’ test bed for IPv6, multicast implementation, layer 2 virtual private networks (VPNs) etc.