National Institute for Information Technology Infrastructure Development

Implementation of the computer network background of Hungarian research-education-public collections

Its mission is to provide a modern infrastructure and application environment, a content generation and access background for Hungarian higher education, research, and public collections. The NIIF Program plays a leading role in the dissemination of the most modern network technologies in Hungary, thereby playing a decisive role in the national development of IT.

The NIIF Program and the HUNGARNET Association maintain diverse, intensive and fruitful international relations. The system of relations extends to both organizational and professional and network relations. International cooperation partners are all national, European and global organizations whose goals are identical or similar to the goals of computer network development and application of research, education and public collections in Hungary.

The nationally homogeneous infrastructure is at the international forefront

• with domestic sample applications,
• by providing a national experimental field,
• by spreading knowledge,
• by spreading the application culture,
• by educating the professional team,
• with the continuous expansion of the range of applications,
• by cultivating legitimate international relations that are appropriate for Hungary's EU membership and that take European norms into account

More than 5,200 member institutions are currently participating in the Program.

He performed his duties within the framework of the National Institute for Informatics Infrastructure Development (NIIFI).

Within the framework of the NIIF Program

the network infrastructure, the system of services and applications based on it, the related application information content and application culture have been established and continuously developed, and with all this the research-education-public collection user base has expanded;

a national computer network connecting academic research institutes, universities, as well as public libraries and public collections was gradually built, ensuring the availability of basic services (e-mail, file transfer, remote login, etc.);

From 1990, the year of international opening, full-fledged Internet connectivity was gradually established and continuously expanded;

the HBONE backbone network, which uses IP technology and provides full coverage, has been built within the country, connecting the urban and distribution networks of users in the capital and rural regions;

The HUNGARNET Association was founded in 1991 and from then on, relations with international research network organizations (RARE, EARN, or TERENA, as well as RIPE, ISOC, CEENET, etc.) gradually developed;

In the early 1990s, regional centers were established in all major rural university, research, and/or public collection centers in the country, enabling the integration of local services and applications with the central NIIF services and applications;

In 1993, HUNGARNET-NIIF joined the European research network center (DANTE, Delivery of Advanced Networking Technology to Europe) as a founding member;

From the mid-1990s, NIIF-HUNGARNET, together with the research networks forming the European forefront, joined the European backbone network TEN-34 project, which was leading in Europe and was also supported by the EC (European Commission), and then the subsequent QUANTUM (TEN-155) project;

After the turn of the millennium, NIIF-HUNGARNET began participating in the GN projects (also supported by the EC) building a gigabit-speed European network, within the framework of the international NREN Consortium established for the implementation and continuous development of the GéANT gigabit European backbone network;

With the creation of GéANT, the European research and education community became a world leader in the characteristics and applications of the research network, and with it the NIIFI network and services began to develop at the forefront. The GéANT connection gradually reached 10, and then 100 Gbps in 2014-2015, and other developments of the NIIF (supercomputing, grid technology, IPv6, videoconferencing, VoIP, and a wide range of other services) also achieved internationally recognized results, reaching 230 Tflops in the HPC distributed system, 7 PByte capacity in the distributed storage area, and approaching 30 in terms of the number of services.

In addition to the coordination of NIIFI, internationally recognized results, an outstanding international role, conditions and network capabilities similar to those of EU members have been developed and exist thanks to the developments and international cooperation of the years following the millennium:

By 2013, more than 700,000 users (7% of the population of Hungary) from about 500 institutions at 700 locations had access to modern infrastructure and services through the research and education network – from 2014, these numbers increased to 5,200 and 2.2 million, respectively, due to the NIIFI remit, which also covers Sulinet;

The number of regional centers is more than 50, which cooperate closely with NIIFI, but carry out their tasks independently;

Shortly after the gigabit GéANT connection was established, the possibility of gigabit international commodity traffic was also created through the DANTE World Service (DWS) service, and in parallel with the increase in the speed of the international exit - together with the expansion of the capacity of the domestic backbone network - the bandwidth of the domestic access network was gradually increased accordingly, also reaching gigabit levels;

Numerous projects have been and are still being run in the field of domestic network infrastructure development, both within the framework of the National Development Plan (New Széchenyi Plan) (TIOP, KMOP, TÁMOP, EKOP projects) and in cooperation with international projects primarily funded by the EU (in recent years, the GéANT2/GN2 and GéANT3/GN3, 6NET, 6DISS and 6DEPLOY, SEEREN2 and SEEFIRE, KnowARC, EGEE2 and EGEE3, SEEGrid, FEDERICA, eInfraNet, SIM4RDM, EMI, HPSEE, PRACE3 and PRACE4, GN3plus, DCH-RP, BYTE, MAGIC, GéANT2020/GN4 projects deserve mention).

Since the turn of the millennium, developments have brought many results in the areas of HBONE/GéANT, E2E, IPv6, QoS, MPLS, VPN, multicast, cache, monitoring and management, etc., the enrichment of network services (supercomputing, remote working, VoIP, videoconferencing, portals, virtual helpdesk, CERT, name stores, PKI/CA, etc.), and network applications (distributed/integrated databases, distance learning, disciplinary applications, Grid, Cloud, HPC, multimedia collaboration, VRE and VRC virtual research environment and cooperation applications, data infrastructures, etc.).

The construction of the NIIFI-DANTE connection, which provided traffic to CERN's first remote data center and was the first 100 Gbps production research connection in Europe, was an outstanding international success in 2013-14.

Milestones

The Information Infrastructure Development (IIF) Program for Research, Education and Public Collections, launched in 1986, which was followed by the NIIF Program [1] from the early 1990s, has achieved numerous results over the past 30 years that can be considered milestones in the progress of the Program, and have been incorporated into the success story of NIIF/Hungarnet efforts as outstanding, often turning-point results of the developments.

Among such milestones, the following are worth highlighting (presenting not only the most important events for the relevant periods, but also international and domestic network speed values, as well as data on connected institutional locations and user numbers, and the rounded value of the annual budget - from the latter, the approximate amounts of specific annual costs per capita can also be easily calculated):

After five successful years – laying the foundations of the domestic research network – the IIF Program continued as the NIIF (National Information Infrastructure Development) Program from the beginning of the 1990s, with the support of all relevant ministries and the OTKA (National Scientific Research Fund).

According to Government Decree 229/2016, the Government Informatics Development Agency (GIDA) operates the NIIF Program.

As of September 1, 2016, the National Information Infrastructure Development Institute (NIIFI) merged into the Government Information Technology Development Agency, as stipulated in the government resolution. In the future, the NIIFU will be responsible for coordinating the NIIF Program and implementing ongoing projects. The NIIF Program will continue to operate as an independent organizational unit within the NIIFU, under the direction of the Deputy President responsible for infrastructure.

Within the framework of the NIIF Program

• educational
• scientific researcher and
• public collection

provides institutions with Internet and multi-level services based on it

According to data from May 2016, 124 higher education institutions (universities, colleges), 4,483 public education institutions (secondary schools, vocational schools, high schools) and 1,109 additional public education institutions (in progress) are joining HBONE.

Of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and other non-profit scientific research institutions , 38 are academic sites and 53 are national research sites.

Of the public collections , 454 libraries and library sites, 14 archives and 64 museums are members of the research network.

In addition, there are 50 additional non-profit institutions, foundations and associations related to education, research and public collection activities.

If we consider the number of employees of these institutions, or in the case of educational institutions, their lecturers and students, it can be said that the NIIF Program has approx.

• 2.5 million users

provides Internet and higher-level services based on it.

Representatives of all supporting organizations have participated and continue to participate in the work of the highest-level governing bodies of the Program (formerly the NIIF "Supervisory Committee" and "Operational Committee", and then, since the late 1990s, the "Program Council").

Since the publication of the government decree on the Program, the government decree, which also regulates issues of responsibility and authority, guarantees the provision of the necessary budgetary support for the ongoing work under the guidance of the Program Council consisting of representatives of the relevant ministries, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (OTKA (NKFIH), and HUNGARNET) - for the continuous implementation of the NIIF Program.

The implementation of the consistently successful Program – gathering the experience of many successful years – is coordinated by the leading institution of the Program, the NIIF Institute (NIIFI). Its main activity – as before, of the IIF, then the NIIF Coordination Office, and later the NIIF Office – is to perform and coordinate tasks ensuring the development and operation of the research and educational information infrastructure in Hungary.

The NIIF Institute cooperates in the implementation of the Program

• with the supporting organizations of the NIIF Program and the Program Council consisting of their representatives,
• with the research, educational and public collection institutions participating in the Program and the HUNGARNET Association, which brings them together, and its Presidency, as well as
• with the Technical Council, which operates as an expert body of the NIIF Program.