Today, March 26, is the Independence Day of Bangladesh, commemorating its declaration of independence from Pakistan in 1971. Parades, political speeches, fairs, concerts, ceremonies and various other events celebrating the history and traditions of Bangladesh will mark the national holiday. And, Bangladesh soon will have more to celebrate!
The Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) recently collaborated with Kent State University and Ireland’s National Research and Education Network (HEAnet) to support the building of the Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BdREN). The new network is being designed to provide connections to geographically dispersed academics, scientists and researchers.
This rapidly developing south-Asian nation has the world's eighth-largest population (~150 million), and in recent history has struggled with high poverty rates and low levels of health and education. Bangladesh also has one of the lowest per-capita usages of the Internet in the world, with less than half of one percent of the Bangladeshi population. The first Bangladeshi connection to the Internet didn’t happen until 1996.
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| VIDEO: BdREN engineers talk about the project with OARnet. |
“Without Internet we can't be connected to the outer world,” a Dhaka University student told the Xinhua News Agency in 2010. “This is a world of information. As we want to gather information there is nothing alternative but to Internet.”
Paul Schopis, chief technology officer at OARnet, gets excited about doing things that have the potential impact people’s quality of life. “If we can bring improvement to someone’s life and help with education efforts, it’s definitely worth it.”
Kent State University received $1.25 million from the World Bank to bankroll the project, which has been led by Javed Khan, Ph.D., a professor of Kent State’s computer science department and an expert in advanced networking. He approached OARnet for assistance because of the experience and expertise its staff accumulated in building its own statewide, internationally prominent network infrastructure.
Schopis realized pretty quickly that Ohio and Bangladesh are roughly the same size, which helped with the creation of the layout and gave the staff insight into how much everything would cost. OARnet engineers created the original draft designs of the network to pitch for financing. OARnet also reviewed the initial bi
d package and made suggestions based on past experience throughout the process. Additionally, OARnet hosted several BdREN staff members who traveled to Columbus for two weeks of training this past summer.
“Since we have experience running a network, we are able to help work through all the issues that come with building and running it,” said Tony Eller, network operations manager at OARnet. “We can share our successes as well as our failures. Hopefully we took some of the trial and error out of the process.”
The project is part of a larger initiative to eventually connect universities across the world via ultra-speed networks and linkages. The project will significantly broaden collaborative opportunities and access to advanced research tools and resources for researchers in the country.
Congratulations, BdREN! Happy birthday, Bangladesh!
