WHAT IS PUBNET?

PubNet, Thaisarn Public Access Network, was established in 1992 at NECTEC as a low-cost but effective way of running an online information service for Thailand via a cooperative network of computers. In the early days, a small group of volunteers fed the network with dial-up lines linked to the Internet to make sure that there was at least one copy of resourceful information for Thailand to develop itself on networking technology. The information served included mirrored FTP sites of world-class freeware/shareware servers; archives of "soc.culture.thai" newsgroup; daily news from Thai News Agency; and many other items. Contents of PubNet was relayed into local electronics bulletin board systems.

PubNet was an integral part of the Thai Scientific/Social Academic and Research Network (THAISARN), the first implementation of Internet of Thailand. The project was sponsored by National Electronics and Computer Technology Center. PubNet was later supported by Digital Equipment Corporation for the main server since late 1993. A few other companies joined the project by additions of high- capacity disk drives to the server. PubNet server grew to 14 GB in 1994.

Additional servers were placed in the PubNet cluster since 1995 and this made the cluster a highly popular servers of Thailand. These servers include: Thailand - The Big Picture, NECTECFTP server, NECTEC Gopher server, Thai Pavilion, The Golden Jubilee (Kanchanapisek) Network, and NECTEC audio/video server.

As from mid 1996, these servers have been re-networked to be on a high-speed FDDI (100 Mbps) backbone at NECTEC's Network Technology Laboratory (NTL). It permits all academic sites of Thailand and all commercial Internet Service Providers to access the network free of charge. International access bandwidth to these servers are sponsored by Internet Thailand Company Limited, the first commercial ISP of Thailand, which, in return, gain a 100 Mbps speed access to PubNet for itself and for all downstream sites.

From November 1997, NTL proudly announces the availabilty of PubNet to all commercial ISPs for direct connection to PubNet via PIE (ThaiSarn Public Internet Exchange). PubNet is connecting to PIE at 100 Mbps speed. The participating ISPs will be benefiting from the privilege of high-speed and direct access to the PubNet backbone through PIE. At the same time, we also make PubNet a more public cyber-place where certain type of information providers may place their contents on our backbone for access convenience from the majority of Internet users in Thailand.

WHY DOES NECTEC RUN PUBNET?

The main reason of running PubNet was initially for "economy" of the use of network. PubNet mirrored FTP sites saved Thailand from flooding the expensive international communication lines with repeated downloading of popular software from abroad. PubNet information server was also serving as Thailand's most referenced "Index" which pointed to all known websites registered under the "th" top-level domain. It helped everyone to find out about all information services available in Thailand.

Archived files about Thailand were also popular items for all users: Thailand and abroad, foreigners and Thai. The "information bureaux" service section of "Thailand - The Big Picture" was also acting as "incubators" for many public-service agencies which could not afford their own web servers by putting their web pages at NECTEC. It was the original web-hosting service in Thailand.

New public-service web servers were recently added to provide more information service to the public. Among them are:

Internet Thailand's Mission-Specific servers for Her Royal Highness Princess Mother, The Asia-Europe Meeting 1996, Internet World Exposition: Thai Pavilion, Kanchanapisek Network and Thai Astronomy Home page.

Send comment and/or updates to webmaster-ntl@nectec.or.th
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
Copyright © 1998 by Network Technology Laboratory of NECTEC. All Rights Reserved.