Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

"We were a learner and follower in the development of the first generation Internet, but we have caught up with world's leaders in the next-generation Internet, become a first mover, and won respect and attention from the international community," said Wu Jianping, director of the expert committee of the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) and a mastermind in the development of the next-generation Internet in China.

CERNET was the first network that brought World Wide Web into China by laying out a national wide university based network back in the 90s. It simply changed how China sees the world and the world sees China. With the help from Intel and HP, CERNET is taking the game up a notch, in the past 12 months, a new network is being carefully planned and tested out – CERNET2. According to the newest update (December, 2004), the speed in the backbone network (IPv6) of CERNET2 reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second.

The National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) set up a China Next-generation Internet (CNGI) fund of 1.4 billion yuan (US$169 million) to support six next-generation Internet networks. Half of them will be used on CERNET2-related projects. The rest of the money was given to five telecom operators.

In CERNET2, half of the key equipment, including routers, was provided by Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies and Tsinghua Bit-Way.
Huawei has already become one of the strongest competitors to Cisco, which achieved prosperity with the Internet and has a dominant position in related technologies.

- Data collected from China Daily ( 中国日报 )