• NCFC: National Computing and Networking Facility of China
• CASNet : Chinese Academy of Sciences Network
• CSTNet: China Science and Technology Network
• CNIC: Computer Network Information Center, a subordinate institute of CAS, operation and management authority of CSTNet
• CNNIC: China Internet Network Information Center, State authorized Chinaís domain name registration institution, under the administration and leadership of CNIC

• Relationship between NCFC, CASNet and CSTNet

• network: important means of R&D and education, wide application in 1980s
• 1980s, China science and education, a period of revitalization
• increasing need for international exchanges, co-operation, resources and information sharing
• Zhongguancun, a most developed, intensively concentrated research and education area. Besides TU and PU, 25 institutes and 45 key labs under CAS with 15,000 scientific and technical staff.
• 1986-1993 Some of Internet applications began in China academic circles.

Approval of NCFC project

• one of Key Study Development Program under World Bank loans

• a high-tech information infrastructure project

• State Planning Committee approved NCFC project in 1989.
• Investment scale

• World Bank loan: US$ 4.2 million
• State Planning Committee : RMB 6.5 million
• Chinese Academy of Sciences: RMB 6.3 million

• provide network communication, computer resource sharing and information resource services for universities and research institutes located in Zhongguancun Area
• develop computer network technology, accumulate experience for construction of large-scale network in China, train network technician, serve as a model
• build up a scientific computing environment for both basic theoretic research and applied basic research

• set up NCFC backbone network, interconnecting TUNet, PUNet and CASNet and providing high-performance network service facility and supercomputer

• backbone optic fiber and network system
• supercomputer system
• set up a network center

• connected with the global Internet
• NCFC expansion to CAS branches outside Beijing to realize networking of 100-odd CAS institutes (CASNet)
• NCFC expansion to all parts of China to become CSTNet
• put Scientific Database on line
• set up CNNIC
• make scientific and technological bibliographic resources accessible on network

• August 26, 1989 State Planning Committee organized an evaluation group for NCFC, a project under the Key Study Development Program, and decided on CAS as the project implementing unit.
• October 1989, NCFC Steering Committee was set up composed of State Planning Committee, State Science and Technology Commission, Natural Science Foundation of China, State Education Commission, TU, PU and CAS. Hu Qiheng was director of Steering Committee.
• November, 1989, Joint designing group was formed by CAS, TU and PU.
• April 1990, Computer Network Center, CAS was established , it was responsible for implementing NCFC project.
• May 1990, Joint designing group made written proposals on the principals of NCFC construction.

• November 1990, Joint designing group completed general design for NCFC backbone network.
• April 1991, Engineering Group of CNC put forward engineering design scheme for backbone. June 1991, optical fiber laying for interconnecting CASNet, PUNet and TUNet was completed.
• November 1992, Purchase Contract for backbone equipment was signed, equipment arrived in July 1993.
• December 1992, CASNet, PUNet and TUNet were set up. CAS started Networking of 100-plus institutes project.

• January 20, 1993 construction of CASNet, PUNet and TUNet finished, and passed Test and Acceptance of State Planning Committee
• October 1993, backbone network were basically completed, 3 networks realized interconnection, various servers were set up
• December 1993, NCFC backbone was operational and in January 1994, it provided round-the-clock service. NCFC network project was fully completed,

• April 20, 1994 a leased 64Kbps satellite channel linking NCFC with Stockten, California of USA was put into service. The first direct connection between China and Internet.
• May 21, 1994, China domain name system was established , with the help of the Computer Application Institute under the General Company of Arms Industry and Carlsru University of Germany, the top domain name server of China was moved to CNC and put into operation. In the same year, a batch of research institutes and S&T management departments were connected with NCFC via microwave links in Beijing.
• Early 1995 -January 1996 NCFC networking with 23 cities via CHINAPAC(X.25) was realized.(CASNet)

• February 5, 1997 State Council designated CSTNet as one of China directly-global-Internet- linked-networks.
• May 1997 a 64Kbps international channel between NCFC and French National Science and Education Network was launched.
• June 3 CNNIC was set up.
• June 27, 1997 2Mbps international channel linking NCFC with US Internet was operational.
• July 1997 high-speed networking via satellite between NCFC and other parts of China was realized.
• November 1, 1997 NCFC passed technical appraisal of CAS.
• 1998 The project won Special Prize of Scientific Progress Award of CAS

• April 1990-1992 The type of mainframe system to purchase was decided. Because of export restrictions of vector computer to China.
• August 1995-June 1996 Bid Documents were worked out in accordance with World Bank requirements. IBM,DEC and CRAY passed pre-qualification. But later, as Commercial Bid Documents of IBM and DEC were not up to standard and CRAY couldn't provide qualified products conforming to technical specifications, the Bid results became invalid.

• August 1995-June 1996 Limited International Bidding Scheme was worked out according to World Bank requirements. Expert Group conducted careful examination and evaluation of DEC,SGI and CRAY products, and SGI Power Challenge 16CPU Supercomputer won the Bid . March 1996, Purchase Contract was signed. June 1996, supercomputer arrived.
• July-December 1996, supercomputer was installed, debugged and tested. 1997, it was put into operation.
• November 18, 1997, Supercomputer Users Committee of NCFC was set up. Bylaws of Supercomputer Users Committee of NCFC was passed.

* MAN (backbone network):
－connect TUNet, PUNet and CASNet into a triangle with single/multi-mode optic fiber, bridge and router
－100Mbps FDDI technology
－realize internetworking with Internet, Cernet, Chinanet and GBnet
* Campus network
－connect Ethernets of 3 campus networks with optic fiber, router , switch, etc.
－3 campus networks: CASNet-Beijing, PUNet , TUNet
* LAN
－CAS institutes in Zhongguancun Area, LANs of teaching buildings at universities
－Ethernet or Fast Ethernet
* By May 1994, NCFC had connected with 150 Ethernets, 3,000-odd computers (800 workstation-above). Several thousand of people accessed the net every day, inbound and outbound traffic reached 700MB daily.

CASNet

* A national network built by CAS
* Developed on the basis of NCFC
* 2 development phases of CASNet
－building 12 CAS branches network,linking 164 institute across China, started in 1992 and finished in 1997.
－construction of WAN, first connected 12 CAS branches and some institutes to Beijing via CHINAPAC in 1995, and built up high-speed satellite and DDN links in 1998
* Networking with 164 research institutes scattered in 24 provinces/cities of the whole country, forming CASNet.

Scale of CSTNet (1)

* A national S&T network based on NCFC and CASNet, connecting a lot of non-CAS S&T units spread across China.
NCFC—CASNet—CSTNet
* Ways of connection
－optic fiber: 100-plus lines , among which 45 in Zhongguancun Area with rate of 100Mbps or 10Mbps
－satellite: 40 stations with a total band width of 7M (64, 128, 256, 512 Kbps)
－DDN: over 10 lines (64, 128, 256Kbps)
－microwave: 80 sets (2M, 3Mbps)
－ISDN and HDSL

Scale of CSTNet (2)

* Work units networked with CSTNet: more than 300
CAS and its subordinate institutes, agriculture, forestry, medicine, electric
power, seismology, meteorology, ecology, TV and radio stations, etc.
* Competent authorities and related research units: National Science Foundation of China, State Administration of Patent, Ministry of Science and Technology, State Bureau of Statistics, etc.
Distribution of users: research institutes 65%,
S&T management authorities 20%
government departments 10%, high-tech firms 5%
* Band width of international channels: 4Mbps (US), 128Kbps (Japan), 64Kbps (France)
* International traffic: inbound/outbound 12G/3G/per day
* Access networks:500-plus, end users : over 100,000,
directly-networked computers: 50,000
* Connection with other networks;
Cernet: 100Mbps, Chinanet: 2Mbps, GBNet: 256Kbps

The resources and services of CSTNet

* Operation of CSTNet, maintenance and access connection
* China’s domain name registration and IP address allocation services
* Network application and S&T information service
* Supercomputing application and service
* Training and popularization of general network knowledge
several thousand of middle/primary students completed training program

Supercomputing application

* SGI supercomputer Power Challenge XL
－16 MIPS R10000 CPUs
－2GB memory, 1MB second cache
－150GB hard disk
－6.4 billion floating point operations
* Hitachi supercomputer SR2201
－32 CPUs
－256MB/node
－68.8GB hard disk
－10 billion/s floating point operations
* Hi IMPACT POWER indigo2 visualization workstation
* application packages: IMSL, SAS, AVS, Gaussian94/98, PATRAN 5.0, etc.

Supercomputing application

* Supported by NSFC, a batch of high-performance scientific computing tasks have been completed and the results are satisfactory. At present, the number of supercomputer users is over 30.
* 1998
CPU Time Provided Actual Computing Time Utilization Rate
(Total) 389168 CPU hours 184561 CPU hours 47.4%
(SGI) 159472 CPU hours 104800 CPU hours 65.7%
(SR2201)229696 CPU hours 79761 CPU hours 34.7%
* Users’ Committee was founded with the support of Natural Science Foundation of China,, bylaws were drawn up, users’ training and management were standardized
* 1999, domestic-made super-server—Dawning 2000-II will enable network computing capability up to 100 billion operations

• registration service
• directory database service
• information service, technical support and training
• By December 1998, domain name registration had reached 18,396 with an average monthly growth rate of 10%.

Network application and development(1)

* NCFC application project, sponsored by Natural Science
Foundation of China,
passed Test and Acceptance in December 1996.
NCFC application project includes 5 sub-projects with total
funding of RMB3 million :
．science and technology software sharing system
．library bibliographic sharing system for Zhongguancun Area
．CAD courseware sharing system under network
environment
．multi-media E-mail system based on LAN and FDDI
．user-friendly interface for Scientific Database

Network application and development (2)

* Construction and development of Scientific Database on-line resources
－85 numerical and factual specialized scientific databases with total data volume of 283GB
－a batch of bibliographic databases with 500,000 records in chemistry, astronomy, biology, rare earth, optics, computer, physics, mathematics, geology, electronics. A joint database containing Chinese, western bibliographic databases and directory databases of western journal is available across the network
－200GB of specialized databases and all the bibliographic databases accessible on network
－1^st Prize of Scientific Progress of CAS 1997, 2^nd Prize of National Scientific Progress 1998

Network application and development (3)

* Network products and application system
－ PC router
－network management system in Chinese
－network traffic statistics system and rating system in Chinese
－Chinese navigation system "Robot"
－NIC security system
－NIC automatic registration system
－information announcement system for "863" program
－CAS homepage system

Future development of CSTNet (1999~ )

Orientation: serve scientific circle ,S&T management authorities, government departments, high-tech firms across China; expand network scale and connect more S&T users

．enrich on-line scientific and technological resources
．enhance scientific and technological application level across
network
．create a new network R&D environment
．become a network base for disseminating popular science

Goals in the coming 3 years
* complete upgrading of backbone
－finish topology of backbone network
－enhance rate of international channels
－expand network scale
* Resources construction of CSTNet
－S&T information resources
－build up network supercomputing environment
－build up a new R&D environment based on Virtual
Lab
－set up "China Virtual Museum of Popular
Science"
* improve CSTNet’s operation, management system and service system

Thank you for your attention.