WEEK 2 : DAY 5 RAILNET

2.5 RAILNET

       We, I should be talking about Railnet. After all this is the topic of the week. But I thought talking about PRS and FOIS first since they interest the public more. Let's proceed :-

2.5.1 Introduction

       Well Well Well if you wish to know about railnet take a bath first. I only teach pure fellows! lame joke isn't it? Unfortunately I am only good at these stuff.

       RAILNET is the administrative network of Indian Railways & it is also called as CWIS (Corporate Wide Information System) of Indian Railways. RAILNET is aimed to connect Railway Board with all Zonal, Divisional, Sub-divisional Hq’s Production units, CTI’s, RDSO & all other units.

2.5.2 Motto of railnet

• As we all know "Paper is precious", "save trees and save earth". Besides paperwork is slow. So, one motto is to Eliminate the need to move paper documents between different Railway units & to achieve paper less office working.
• The present generation hates to wait. They need everything on demand. So, to change from present periodic reporting to information on demand railnet was introduced.

2.5.3 Implementation of railnet

• Internet gateways are setup for access of Internet through the RAILNET.
• All Railway units i.e. Railway Board, Zonal Railways, Production units, CTI’s launched their web sites on the RAILNET.
• All Railway units launched Mail servers for giving the mailing facility to their users. 

       RAILNET is implemented in 3 phases :-

• In the 1st phase all Zonal Railways and production units were connected with Railway board.

•  In the 2nd phase all Divisions, CTIs, RDSO, CORE & MTP were connected to the existing setup .

• In the 3rd & final phase all major stations, Store depots were connected to the existing setup.

2.5.4 Railnet General Arrangement

Typical Railnet setup at Railway Board

Typical RAILNET setup at Zonal HQ

2.5.5 Hardware and Software components used in railnet

1) Hardware Components

• Compaq Server Compaq Proliant 1600R .
• Cisco Router Cisco 3640 and Cisco 2610.
• Switches Cisco Catalyst 2924 XL with 22 (10/100Mbps RJ45 port) and 2 FX (optical fiber) ports.
• Modem RAD V.35 64kbps modems.

1) Software Components

• Windows NT Server 4 as the Network OS.
• IIS 4.0 as the Web and FTP Server2.
• Lotus notes as a Mail Server.

2.5.6 IP scheme of railnet

       RAILNET uses the TCP/IP protocols, RAILNET can be easily scaled for Internet as well. RAILNET has used the private IP address of 10.0.0.0/16, The IP addressing scheme is uniform and consistent all the web servers were given with an IP 10.xx.2.19 and Routers with an IP 10.x.2.1.

2.5.7 Email addressing

• With the same email ID, users can exchange emails both on the RAILNET & Internet. 
•  The entire RAILNET is under a single domain railnet.gov.in. 
•  The generic email address of RAILNET users will be user (official designation)[at]railway(code)[dot]railnet[dot]gov[dot]in 

        Example:- 

 Chairman, Railway Board      -         crb[at]rb[dot]railnet[dot]gov[dot]in

CSTE, Western Railway      -          cste[at]wr[dot]railnet[dot]gov[dot]in 

2.5.8 GUIDELINES FOR RAILNET NETWORKS

         IRPMU will monitor the functioning RAILNET to ensure Uniformity of network (WAN) across Indian Railways

•  RAILNET will be setup on MPLS based VPN network of RCIL.
•  Railway Board will be connected to the MPLS network with 10 MBPS link.
• All the RAILNET locations viz. Zones, Divisions, CTIs, PUs etc. will be connected to the MPLS network of RCIL using 2 Mbps links.
• All backbone wiring of LAN should be on the fiber (1 Gbps).
• Manageable switches providing higher speeds to be used.
• Network should be designed in such a way as to provide sufficient redundancy and the concept of V-LAN should be introduced for traffic segregation wherever required.
• Four(4) Internet gateways are setup at Metros to get Internet on RAILNET to the authorized users.

2.5.9 Applications of RAILNET

   1) Railnet users can exchange e-mail on the Internet.
   2) Commercial Department is using RAILNET for their ‘Complaint Centers'. 
   3) Railways have launched their web pages on RAILNET and they update the information. 
   4) Authorised users can access the internet through RAILNET either in LAN or through Remote Dial-up on Rly. Telephone. 
   5) RAILNET users can share the resources.

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