Milestones

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The IIF (Information Infrastructure Development) Program of the Hungarian academic, research, and public collection communities has started in 1986. From the early 90's the IIF Program has been continued under the name of NIIF (National Information Infrastructure Development) Program.

From among the results of the past several years of the NIIF Program, the following main items are worth to mention, as milestones of the progress:

• the network infrastructure, as well as the services, applications, and application contents, based on the infraíastructure, together with the user capabilities and aptitudes, exploiting the infrastructure and the services/applications, have been well established, and continuously developed while, at the same time, also the aggregate user community from the areas of research, education, and public collections, has also been continuously widened;
• thanks to the political changes in the year 1990, full Internet connection could be established - in  parallel with building the first generation of the Hungarian research and education backbone called HBONE;
• HUNGARNET, the Hungarian Academic and Research Network Association has been founded in 1991, and from that date, also formal international relations have been established with the international organisations, namely with the predecessors (RARE and EARN) of TERENA, as well as with ISOC, the Internet Society;
•  from 1992, the regional R&E networking centres have been step by step created;
•  in 1993, HUNGARNET/NIIF has joined the European research networking “operational unit”, DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Networking Technology to Europe);
•  from 1994, more than 200 NIIF/HUNGARNET institutions have already had international connectivity through EuropaNET, operated by DANTE;
•  the number of the users has doubled every year and until 1995 it has reached 100.000, while the monthly data traffic, having quadrupled every year, has increased above 1000 GByte;
•  thanks to the results and the successful international relations, 1996 brought the first 2 Mbps international access speed to almost 300 institutions and about 200.000 users in Hungary;
• 1997 was the year of another milestone: NIIF/HUNGARNET has joined the leading edge European research networks in their joint efforts related to the EC supported, highly advanced TEN-34 project;
•  within TEN-34, 10+5 Mbps European and overseas access speed and a new, 2 Mbps internal backbone has served, from 1998, the almost 300.000 users of the research network, while the capacities on the regional and metropolitan levels have also considerably increased;
•  the year 1999 has brought the next breakthrough: the new Governmental Decree about the NIIF Program has been announced, by reforming the supervision, and by strengthening the financial stability of the Program, while, in parallel, also the participation of NIIF/HUNGARNET at the EC-supported QUANTUM (TEN-155) project has been started;
•  the international/intercontinental access speeds of the NIIF/HUNGARNET network have reached first 68/34 Mbps, later 155/78 Mbps, and again later 310/155 Mbps during 2000, while HBONE has been transformed to a 155 Mbps backbone with 3.5 Gbps aggregate capacity, and, on the European level, the preparations for the GEANT project have also been started in Hungary;
•  the year 2001 has been characterised by more than 400 user institutions and about 400.000 individual users within these institutions, while the national backbone, thanks to the rapidly emerging competition on the newly liberalised Hungarian telecommunication market, also passed a very fast development period, so that it has practically reached the level of the European leading edge;
•  from early 2002, (practically as soon as in late 2001 the operation of the GEANT network has started), the R&E network users in Hungary have already enjoyed the 2.5 Gbps GEANT access speed, while also the internal backbone speed has been increased to 2.5 Gbps, together with a notable success of several technology and/or application oriented internal projects, such as those related to high performance computing, grids, IPv6, video conferencing, VoIP, a wide range of further services, etc.
• in 2003 both the international GEANT connectivity and the internal network of NIIF/HUNGARNET has considerably developed: within a two years period: 10 Gbps has been reached as the characteristic speed both internally and internationally;
• the year 2004 of NIIF/HUNGARNET has been charcterised by entering the GEANT+ service (10 Gbps IP + 10 Gbps e2e [end-to-end] capacity);
• since 2005-2006 not only the 10 Gbps DWDM-based internal network has been completed together with the completion of GEANT2, but also the number of development projects, including those international co-operations funded by the EU FP5 and FP6 Programme (GN1,GN2, 6NET, 6DISS, EGEE-1, EGEE-2, KnowARC, SEEREN-1, SEEREN-2, SEEFIRE) has considerably increased within the activities of NIIF/HUNGARNET.

The development continues. Some 500 institutions and more than 600.000 users within the research, education, and public collections communities have been enjoying leadong edge networking services late in 2006 in Hungary, and that's just another milestone on the way towards the next generations of the research network - in the continuous development process characterising the joint efforts of the European NRENs. By this way NIIF/HUNGSRNET not only pprovides the research and education community with an infrastructure equivalent with the highest level available in the most developed parts of the world, but also provides pilots and testbeds to the overall development of IT applications in HUNGARY, fulfils a mission of disseminating crucil information and a basic culture in order to bring the wide Hungarian user community closer to the attained Information Society - in close co-operation with the European partners and by taking into consideration the basic European standards and values.