HEC establishing high speed networks
By Hina Kiyani

ISLAMABAD—The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is now establishing a high speed dedicated National Research and Research Education Network (NREN) for universities/institutes and other academic sectors of Pakistan.
This will provide students, faculty members and researchers a fully integrated and dedicated communication infrastructure using advanced information and communication technologies. NREN will help achieve true collaborative research, knowledge, resources sharing and distance learning.
PERN2 is the next generation education and research network of Pakistan. This project is aimed to provide gigabit connectivity to all the universities/ institutes of higher learning with a multi-gigabit core network across the country. Operation requirements for nationwide connectivity have been finalized with the provision of establishing Gigabit Metro Network in all metropolitan cities of Pakistan and long-haul Multi Gigabit connectivity of these Metro networks and other PoPs. PERN2 will fulfil the requirements of advance technologies and applications with proper security and management.
The Higher Education Commission and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) are jointly funding a high performance research and education network connection to support Pakistan-US science and technology collaboration.
The project will connect the existing Pakistan and Research Education Network (PERN) and developing PERN2 to the global research and education network infrastructure. This connection will be implemented by a joint purchase of capacity on an undersea cable system connecting PERN/PERN2 in Karachi to an international network connection point in Singapore.
The network connections will greatly assist the scientific collaborations being defined between the US and Pakistan by allowing more direct, high-speed access and communication among Science and Technology investigators and the worldwide resources.
One of the many examples involve high-speed access to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to foster the ongoing collaborative research with COMSATS Institute of Information Technology on growth and characterization of semiconductor and magnetic Nano crystals.