A router developed for the first time in the country will soon be translated into a manufactured in India product.

The developer is the IIT Bombay while the manufacturer will be the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), Hyderabad. The public sector electronics giant has entered into a licence agreement with IIT Bombay to manufacture high-speed transport routers.

A router is a device that helps forward packets of data along networks, say, the Internet. For the common user, a router is necessary in a LAN (local area network) to connect several computers to the internet.

Innovative technology

The Gigabit Networking Laboratory at the IIT Bombay has developed an innovative technology under the leadership of Professor Aswin Gumaste to make these routers, which promise to set new price and performance benchmarks in an industry dominated primarily by imported products.

With built-in security features and a fully Indian design, this development is significant in the context of fears expressed by experts about the vulnerabilities posed by ‘black box' products, populating the information highway, which carry vital and strategic data, the ECIL has said.

With the national data infrastructure set to grow manifold and gigabit pipes slated to enter villages, this development augurs well and fits into the indigenous technology space. The ECIL Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Y.S. Mayya, and IIT Bombay's Director, Prof. Devang Khakkar signed the agreement on Wednesday.

The core of the router consists of an indigenous technology that facilitates the collapsing of the three layers of the Internet-namely the physical, the data link and the network layer into a single unified networking medium.

The high speed routers are essential for the next generation networks which support metro transport and data centre.

Three products have been created from the technology - an entry level access switch, a metro/data centre transport router and a core carrier Ethernet cross-connect.

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