Achievement
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How do we refer to the growing number of Iranian individuals and companies dealing with the Internet? Do they establish a sector, an industry or a technology? To clarify many of the issues in this regard, as of this issue, Iran International features a survey that discusses the country’s history with the Net and the developing infrastructure in this regard. Internet Connectivity Infrastructure History: Origins of the effort to bring the Internet to Iran date back to 1987. At the time, the Internet (also called ARPANET) was a project supported by the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), connecting various academic and defense research centers in the US. This network supported only email and simple data transfer (ftp). A similar network supported by IBM was known as BITNET. In Europe, only universities and academic centers were connected to the European Academic Research Network (EARN) which was part of the BITNET network.Iran’s entrance into the Internet was then spearheaded by Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM). The link was at first through the BITNET network and Iran’s membership in EARN. It consisted of a single 9600-baud leased line to the University of Vienna in Austria in January 1992. The first email from Iran was a simple greeting from IPM’s director to Vienna University administrators. The link later developed into a full-fledged Internet link with the assignment of 500 IP addresses to the country and acceptance of Iran as a Class C node. Primary users of the connection at first were academics and research institutions, all being served through their own connections to IPM. Over the past few years, domestic Internet connections have grown very rapidly, at times placing Iran among the top countries in terms of rate of growth of Internet access. The present Iranian Internet scene, more than seven years after the original connection, is still a very dynamic one, with tens of thousands of mostly academic users being served via a single 512 kbps link, and with networks and bulletin boards expanding everywhere. Recently, however, additional outside links have been put into operation by the Iranian PTT, serving mostly commercial entities and government agencies. Ambitious plans for expanding Internet access and availability nationwide have also been announced. As an indication of the rapid growth of the Internet in Iran, for the first time, the two leading presidential candidates in the May 1997 elections used the world wide web to get their message across: President Khatami at http://www.khatami.com and Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri at http://nategh.co.ir. Results of the elections were announced “live” on the Web Site of the Iranian government (http://www.netiran.com) as well.
The technical know-how for putting
very fast links into operation in Iran is certainly there. A variety of protocols for
satellite channels at T1 speeds of 1.544 Mb/s were tested by the Data Communication
Company of Iran (DCI) in the late 1980’s. A major reason for lack of progress on fast
connections to Iranian universities and research centers for some time was friction
between DCI and both IPM and the High Council of Informatics (HCI) - the governmental body
charged with strategic planning of information technology expansion in Iran. At the same
time one cannot discount the effect of the U.S. embargo on Iran, which has made the
acquisition and maintenance of powerful servers, workstations, and satellite communication
equipment difficult. The second major internal Internet connectivity is provided by the Public Data Network (PDN) operated by DCI as an independent subsidiary of the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI).
Figure 2.1: Iran’s inter-city 64 kbps ISDN lines, as of 1997. The network has since been expanded to include many other cities, including Yazd, Urmia, Zahedan, Arak, and Rasht External Internet Connectivity: Currently external Internet connectivity is provided exclusively through satellite links. Iran’s major external Internet connections are as follows:
Figure 2.2: Iran’s National IP Network IRIB: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting currently has a 2 Mbps full duplex, symmetric connection from The Netherlands to Tehran. However, this line is expected to be downgraded to 1 Mbps due to mounting expenses.
Growth in the number and bandwidth of external links has been better during the past couple of years since President Khatami’s election, and more links are expected to be operational in the near future. Iran’s external Internet links use TCP/IP over satellite exclusively and have exhibited a very high reliability (uptime of 95-99%). Courtesy of The Open Research Network To Be Continued |
