SLT boosts distance education through broadband connectivity

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) has been chosen as the communication infrastructure provider for National On-line Distance Education Service (NODES). It operates under the Distance Education Modernisation Project (DEMP) of the Ministry of Education.

The company will provide connectivity solutions for National On-line Distance Education Service (NODES), an initiative of DEMP, with a Wide Area Network (WAN), operating on fibre optic based Virtual Private LAN services (VPLS) of SLT Metro Ethernet which can support advanced data, voice, video and higher-speed internet services.

The WAN connects the NODES Access Centres (NACs) of DEMP from across the country facilitating distance learning.

SLT's solution will allow NODES Access centres to access multi media content over the NODES WAN. The NACs will be connected to the NODES WAN through fibre optics giving different access speeds based on current requirements. The NODES network provides optical fibre to all NODES locations, with the NODES WAN established using Metro Ethernet running on IP-MPLS technology.

The solution will allow NODES to support triple-play services (Voice, Video, Broadband internet and Data) with seamless connectivity. It is a secure and fully managed network.

The solution comprises connecting the NODES Network Operation Centre (NOC) at 45 Mbps speed, Demonstration NODES Access Centre (DNAC) at 4Mbps speed and all nine NACs connected at a 2Mbps bandwith which is upgradable as an when the need arises.

All NACC s are in Open Universities under the first phase of the project.

An additional 11 NACs will be connected to NODES NOC under the next phase.

The NODES will be connected to the internet via SLTnet, the largest ISP in Sri Lanka through very high bandwidth optical fibre connectivity with a 10 Mbps bandwidth to avoid bottlenecks in the bandwidth.