Education and Research Network (ERNET) is an autonomous scientific society of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.

It practically brought the Internet to India and has built up national capabilities in the area of net-working, especially in protocol software engineering.

ERNET is largest nationwide terrestrial and satellite network with point of presence located at the premiere educational and research institutions in major cities of the country.

The activities at ERNET India are organised around five technology focus areas: ERNET was initiated in 1986 by the Department of Electronics (DoE), with funding support from the Government of India and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), involving eight premier institutions as participating agencies— NCST (National Centre for Software Technology) [Now CDAC] Bombay, IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Bangalore, five IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) at Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras, and the DoE, New Delhi.

The VSAT network acts as an overlay for the terrestrial WAN by providing backup links between the backbone sites.