PERN3 – Strengthening of Core Network & Expansion of PERN footprints through CPEC Optical Fiber
PERN3 is an ultra-high-speed backbone network which will provide 40 Gbps Core extendable to 100Gbps of back bone connectivity by interlinking 70+ Cities across the country and territorial network partners (HED’s). This powerful digital infrastructure will connect country to national and global data, tools and classrooms that fuel the engine of innovation in today’s digital economy. More than 50,000 researchers at nearly 300 Pakistani universities should be able use this network, as well as scientists at many research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories throughout the country. Similarly, this network will encourage to run supercomputing Research and Education facility in High performance computing with a mission to support the research and development efforts specially in the areas of Fluid Dynamics and Biosciences, huge data processing applications such as Flood and Weather Forecasting, Financial Analysis, Oil and Gas Exploration, Energy Efficient Building Designs and Transportation Management at national-level.
Further with the connectivity of Karachi-Quetta through Lasbela & Gwadar while completing the 20G ring to Peshawar via DI. Khan and further from Islamabad to Kujrab via Gilgit Baltistan will not only bring high resiliency in the network but will enable HEC to empower the rural area institute of Balochistan and KPK and interior Sindh.
PERN 3 Features
- Addition of new Segments to Core resiliency i.e Quetta-Peshawar (Via DI.Khan), Lasbela-Kuzdar (Karachi-Quetta), Lasbela-Tubat, Turbat- Gwadar, Rawalpindi-Kunjrab
- Establishment of 24+ Aggregated-PoP through Transmission network covering rural areas of the country which will enable PERN to accommodate connectivity of affiliated colleges across the country.
- Bi-furcation of Network Long haul rings for high resiliency and to overcome sustainability issue, it will also increase in foot print at Central (RING-1) and South (RING-3) to protect and improve PERN services to its 1Million users.
- Expansion of PERN backbone from 10Gbps to 40G extendable to 100G and 40G Metro ring at Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi to cater Intranet/ Internet demand.
- Expansion of Last Mile connectivity to selected universities from 1Gbps to 10Gbps.
- Establishment of eight (8) new sRA-PoP (Small Regional Access-PoP). i.e Conversion of long haul sites/Universities into sRA-PoP
- PERN connectivity is to be extended in the new universities / Campus and colleges. Connectivity to the colleges is to be extended based on one of the three categories i.e Optic fiber, distant location (third party), Radio/ Wireless Connectivity
Academic Services Enhancement
- Last Mile Connectivity to new HEI’s in new districts:
PERN connectivity is to be extended in the new districts where HEC in next 3 years has panned to establish 36 new sub campuses of existing universities in the districts having no Universities or sub campus at the moment. Similarly 9 existing sub campuses will be upgraded to full-fledged universities and 4 new universities will be established. All these Universities, Campuses and Sub campuses to be facilitated by PERN.
- Centralized services to HEI through PERN:
Since rise of internet and web-based technologies as more strategic tools than ever before, so in order to improve productivity, enhance business processes, and accelerate change. Data centers are the strategic focus of IT efforts to protect, optimize and grow the business.
By introducing VDI i.e Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Safe Campus Central Solution and Central Surveillance, Unified Communication and Shared Services, Storage as a Service, and Training as a Service this approach allows colleges IT resource to outsource local services to a cloud service provider i.e at PERN datacenter which are to be established under same project in two different cities for redundancy. And these services will be hosted/ extended to HEI from centralized data Center
- Security and Monitoring
Since HEI’s in the country have started hosting services, Pakistan Education and Research Network has focused on practicing best network security practices that are also in compliance with the national security agencies. Recently, the need for a cyber policy at national as well as educational level is much felt and therefore, HEC while expanding PERN footprints has proposed to take initiative of cyber security in the HEIs of Pakistan. The need for the same was much felt when incidents like students interacting with banned outfits through different means of internet occurred within the universities. HEC is already in coordination with the national security agencies to curb such incidents.