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All banks, FIs can now use Infinet

C.R. Sukumar

HYDERABAD, Nov. 26

IN a development significant for the country's banking and financial sector, the INdian FINancial NETwork (INFINET) has been thrown open to all private sector banks, foreign banks, cooperative banks and financial institutions across the country.

INFINET is the nationwide communication backbone for banks and FIs established by the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) here. Hitherto, the facility was restricted to public sector banks belonging to the closed user gro up.

The latest move is expected to greatly benefit the customers of private banks and FIs. INFINET's VSAT network, spanning 108 cities and towns with 481 VSATs already installed and commissioned, enables data traffic and voice or video traffic.

As the communication lines have improved and leased line costs have also become reasonable, IDRBT has chalked out a detailed plan for seamless integration of the VSAT network with a high bandwidth leased line network (LLN) connecting 21 major cities. Thi s would enable each bank to develop its own intra-city or nearby cities network and come through a single gateway to get linked to the INFINET through the LLN gateway.

A dedicated port would be allocated to each participating bank and FI at the gateway and dedicated bandwidth would also be made available. Having recently obtained the approval of the Department of Telecommunications for this purpose, the IDRBT top brass has initiated measures to procure the necessary communication equipment and networking components. The LLN is expected to be in place shortly.

"With the integration of LLN with the existing VSAT network, the users of INFINET will have the option of dynamic routing between VSATs and leased lines depending upon traffic volumes, specific application requirements and other factors such as time crit icality," a senior IDRBT official told Business Line.

INFINET offers a wide variety of intra-city as well as inter-city connectivity options. Banks and FIs can connect their low volume branches to VSAT ports through the city-wise gateway of the LLN through PSTN/ISDN/leased lines. Banks and FIs can also deve lop their own virtual private networks on the INFINET and effectively implement enterprise-wide intranets.

Once banks and FIs develop their own enterprise-wide intranet using INFINET infrastructure, they can port a number of their intra-bank applications on the INFINET.

"...there are some critical factors which come in the way of porting of applications by many banks and FIs on the INFINET. Either the banks and FIs do not have applications developed already or the software is of a standalone nature and does not have net working modules. Moreover, most of the banks and FIs are yet to develop their own local area networks which can be linked to the wide area network node," the official said.