Asia-Wide Backbone

Background

There are, however, still some problems on infrastracture and technologies for information sharing in this resion: especially intra-Asia-Pacific internetworking. Because almost all of countries in this region have Internet-connectivities now, but these links are usually connected to gateways in the United States. In other words, the United States acts as a hub for Intra-Asia-Pacific Internet traffic. It is obvious that this situation should be improved.

Now there are many attempts at constructing the intra-Asia-Pacific Internet backbone. These are planed and managed by various groups: Internet Service Providers (ISPs), academic organizations, research institutes, and consortium of some of them. Each groups has adopted different way to establish the Asia-Wide Backbone. In this time there is no answer that which model of the backbone is best. But, all of these groups have same objective: to break away US-centric paradigm of the Internet by constructing the intra-Asia-Pacific Internet backbone which is stable and reliable.

Candidates of the intra-Asia-Pacific Internet backbone
in the future

A-Bone

A-Bone , launched in 1996, is the highest speed Internet backbone in the Asia Pacific region which is provided by Asia Internet Holding Co.,Ltd. (AIH)

AIH aims to establish a reliable intra-regional Internet backbone for the Asia-Pacific region. Current connectivity is:

• 1.5 Mbps leased line between Hong Kong and Tokyo
• 2 Mbps line between Singapore and Tokyo

AIH plans to expand this network by linking Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and South Korea to the A-Bone. AIH also plans that most of the major countries in the region (including Philippines, Australia, China and Viet Nam) will be linked to the A-Bone by fiscal year 1998.

SINGNET/STIX (Singapore Telecom Internet Exchange)

STIX aims to create a meshed backbone which routes Asia Pacific traffic directry within the Asia Pacific, instead of US-centric network model.

STIX Connectivity Map : direct link to current STIX connectivity map.

STIX Connectivity LIST

Internet 1996 World Exposion (Japan Homepage is HERE)

The Internet 1996 World Exposition is a world's fair for the information age: all Pavilion presense on the Internet, as a World Wide Web (WWW) site.

IWE is a global fair: not only Asia-Pacific Resion. But IWE acts very impotant role on the evaluation of Internet in Asia-Pacific region.

The Internet Railroad: a high-speed backbone circling the world, for general-purpose Internet infrastracture (GII). Current status is HERE , and The railroad map by Bay Networks is HERE .

Pan Asia Networking (PAN)

The Pan Asia Networking (PAN) of Canada's International Development Research Centre is a program to extend electronic networking in Asia and support the development of communications and sharing of data resources around research and policy issues.

Asian Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI³)

It is necessary for all of the contries in Asia-Pacific region to have its own Internet-connectivities which has bandwidth enough to usages of current Internet, such as World Wide Web (WWW). But there is many countries which cannot have these link because of high cost and immature of technologies.

AI³ project , which has been started by WIDE (Widely Integrated Distribute Environment) Project and JSAT (Japan Satellite Systems Inc.) in October 1995, is the testbed construction and a series of research activities on the testbed. Research topics of the AI³ project includes network design for the future Asia-Pacific Information Infrastracture (APII).

Global Reach Internet Consortium (GRIC)

GRIC is an international consortium currently deploying a worldwide Internet roaming service based on Aimnet Corporation's AimTraveler roaming server software.

Current GRIC members is HRER .

Asia-Pacific Advanced Network(APAN)

APAN is a consortium which will construct Asia-Pacific Information Infrastructure, especially high-speed Internet backbone, for regional cooperation and collaboration. APAN also will be a hub of Asia-Pacific Internet traffic, instead of current Internet connectivity which centered in USA.
APAN's operation starts in 1997. After 2000 it will upgrade to GIGA-bit class network.