Page Updated: 05-Feb-2009
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Virtual Silk Highway

A computer networking project for the Caucasus and Central Asia

News 05/02/2007 - NATO Enhanced service for the Virtual Silk Highway 09/04/2006 - NATO STS projects in Turkmenistan 10/10/2004 - NATO Afghanistan links to the Virtual Silk Highway 26/08/2003 - NATO Final step on the Virtual Silk Highway 11/06/2003 - NATO NATO Secretary General inaugurates Georgia link in Virtual Silk Highway 14-15/05/2003 - NATO Lord Robertson visits Caucasus 17/01/2003 - NATO New link on the Virtual Silk Highway 20-29/08/2002 - Budapest Report on the Advanced Networking Workshop "Engineering the Virtual Silk Highway" 19/08/2002 - NATO Historic first Link on the Virtual Silk Highway 20/06/2002 - NATO Computer networking panel meeting in Kazakhstan 20-22/06/2002 - NATO Meeting of Computer Networking Panel in Kazakhstan Information Glossary of used terms Opinions 17/01/2003 - NATO The Silk Road in the Dimension of the XXI Century - Speech by the President of the Kyrgyz Republic Spring 2002 - NATO Review Article: Building the virtual silk highway Multimedia 19/01/2003 Video conference with President of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze .WMV/5796Kb PDF Library PDF/120Kb Key links Virtual Silk Highway Related projects

The ancient Silk Road was not only a trade route but also an all-important road for the transfer of information and knowledge between major regions of the world. A new multi-year NATO computer networking project plans to bring highly cost effective, global Internet connectivity to the Caucasus and Central Asia through state-of-the-art satellite technology, thus creating a modern information network.

Concept of the Project

The academic and educational communities in the eight countries concerned will be connected to the Internet by way of a common satellite beam. New technology makes it possible for each of the countries to have its own minimum bandwidth capacity and at the same time make use of unused bandwidth of other participating countries. In addition, the use of modern data caching techniques, enabled by the choice of satellite technology, should allow further improvement in the effective bandwidth achieved. More...

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