In August, 1989, Chinese Academy of Sciences undertook the project NCFC, sponsored by State Development Planning Commission, which is the predecessor of CSTNET. In April, 1994, NCFC first directly interconnected with NSFNET of US, realizing China’s full-function network connection with Internet, marking the birth of China’s earliest global Internet. In December, 1995, the project “Internetworking of 100 CAS Institutes” was completed, and in February, 1996, CSTNET based on NCFC was formally named CSTNET by Chinese Academy of Sciences.
After the development of over a decade, CSTNET has covered nearly 30 provinces, cities, autonomous regions in China via 13 regional sub-centers at Beijing, Shenyang, Changchun, Wuhan, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hefei, Chendu, Lanzhou, Xi’an, Kunming, Xingjiang to form the domestic backbone with core network of 10G,WAN 155M-2.5G and access network 1G.
As the China’s first network operation institution with international outbound link, CSTNET has maintained a high-speed growth momentum. It has owned many international lines linking US, Russia, South Korea, Japan, HK, Taiwan regions respectively and has high-speed networking of 1G-2.5G with China Telecom, China Netcom, CERNET, BJNAP, etc.
CSTNET has the dual characteristics as both national public network and CAS R&D network. Relying on technology advantage of CAS, CSTNET has committed to providing informatization support and services for CAS e-Science and ARP, becoming a first-rate network service platform for the nation’s S&T innovation and informatization. CSTNET is the first to put forward the service concept of “IRS(Internet Resource Service)” as the brand-new service mode, integrate network access, network management and network resources, and provide efficient, high-speed and to-quality services. In addition, CSTNET has independently undertaken nearly 100 network projects such as the project “Internetworking of 100 CAS Institutes” , "CAS Network upgrading”, and development of state “863” computer network and information management system, network traffic billing system, network security system , and is responsible for construction and maintenance of CAS video conference and mail system. Currently, CASNET is participating construction of CNGI.
In recent years, CSTNET has a lot of international collaboration and exchanges with US, EU, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and HK regions, establishing good relationship. On January 12, 2004, China-US-Russia Network GLORIAD was initialized which was funded jointly by CAS, US NSF and Russian CRMSO. This project will support science and technology applications of the above three countries and the world as well and also the research on the next generation Internet. CSTNET will provide high-speed bandwidth for the advanced applications with final bandwidth of 10G, and will be committed to organizing and promoting multiple cross-discipline applications and resources sharing. On November 23, 2004, the HongKong Open Exchange Point HKOEP was formally established. CSTNET is gradually to become an international network operation institution.
As a pioneer of China Internet, CSTNET will continuously march forward and strive hard to make greater contributions to the informatization construction for the country’s science and technology research.
