Page Updated: 04-May-2007
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Virtual Silk Highway

A computer networking project for the Caucasus and Central Asia

About.... The Virtual Silk Highway Opinions 17/01/2003 - NATO The Silk Road in the Dimension of the XXI Century - Speech by the President of the Kyrgyz Republic Additional information Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)

Progress of the Virtual Silk Highway

Since the first delivery of Silk Project satellite equipment and the successful link-up to Uzbekistan in August, work has been underway to establish links in four more countries.

President Askar Akaev of the Kyrgyz Republic launched the network in Bishkek on 17 January, when he attended the first video link-up between Bishkek and the network hub in Hamburg, Germany. To mark the occasion and to show the appreciation of the Kyrgyz Republic for NATO's role in the development of this project, the President also presented a Certificate of Appreciation to the NATO Programme Director, Dr. Walter Kaffenberger.

Other milestones in the Silk Highway have been:

• Tbilisi, Georgia - After a number of technical problems had been resolved, a dish was installed in Tbilisi, Georgia, which became fully operational in early October
• Dushanbe, Tajikistan and Almaty, Kazakhstan also took delivery of satellite dishes by the end of 2002.
  On 1 December, the shared bandwidth of 3.5 Mbps was increased to about 7 Mbps
• Account of the Launch of the Virtual Silk Highway - August 2002
• Following delivery and testing of the equipment over the previous few weeks at DESY in Hamburg, the first successful satellite link-up took place between Hamburg and Budapest on 20 August 2002.

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