NIC Full Form

Many people have often heard about the acronym NIC in government and security departments to computer networking where this acronym is very commonly used as well as in games. The NIC long form for electronics is noise isolation card whereas in government firms it stands for name information centre or national intelligence community whereas in business it is commonly used to denote natural insect control and many more. But not many people are aware of a department formed by the Indian government that is popularly known as NIC. So what does NIC stand for? In order to understand the functioning and the requirements of this department within the government one must be aware of “what is the full form of NIC?”

NIC Full Form 

The full form of NIC National Informatics Centre, which is a prestigious and reputed institute for science and technology. It was established in 1976 in order to develop skilled and knowledgeable technicians who can efficiently support the government IT services and can constructively work towards the digital India initiatives. 

The director-general as of June 2021 is Neeta Verma and this institution is functional under the Ministry of Information and Technology in the Indian government. It has been successful in providing e-governance support to the IT cell of the government of India for four decades now and also taking active initiatives to support the digital India movement. In the past four decades, NIC has been closely associated with the government and its different aspects of governance. 

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It has worked towards establishing a state of the art ICT infrastructure both for central government and state government, UT administration and other governing bodies. National Informatics Centre (NIC full form in computer) has offered a wide range of services starting from a multi-gigabit nationwide network called NICNET, NKT, National Data Centre, National Cloud, pan India VC infrastructure, Command and Control centre, Domain registration and Webcast and multi-layer GIS-based platform. All these services combined help the citizens of India in delivering citizen e-centric information accurately and in much less time.  

NIC plays a key role in executing major IT projects in close collaboration with the central and state governments. It helps in the end-to-end delivery of government services to the citizens of India all over the country in the form of a variety of digital solutions. NIC is dedicated to catering to the needs of ICT at all the governmental levels starting from central, state, district, judiciary to legislative level. NIC has proven its efficiency by managing most of the major government initiatives such as Swachh Bharat Mission, My-Gov, E-Hospitals, E-courts, E-transport, fertilizer distributions and many more. All these initiatives were completely managed solely by the NIC department using the digital platform that was originally developed by NIC itself.

 Major Functions of NIC

Some of the major functioning of NIC is as follows:

1. It has worked in developing “informatics-led-development” using ICT applications for social platforms as well as public administrations.

2. It facilitates the delivery of electronic services using the virtual internet platform from government to government, government to the business of public or private sectors and government to citizens.

3. NIC has formed a major gigantic network in association with ITC. NIC through the ITC network has linked itself with ministries of central and state government, union territories and over 700 district administrations all over India.

4. It offers various integrated solutions to government e-schemes and helps in the last-mile delivery of government service from the end of the government to the citizens of India all over the country.

With some of these major functions  National Informatics Centre (NIC full form) some of the major activities of NIC are as follows:

1. Creating ICT infrastructure

2. Implementing e-governance schemes and projects

3. To provide consultation regarding the IT problems and handling to various departments of government.

4. To promote research and development programs and to promote capacity building

Services of NIC

NIC has come a long way in expanding its network around the country as NIC makes efficient use of new technologies to promote the capacity building as well as projecting user-friendly solutions to various governmental departments. It studies various technologies and experiments related to it and the methods to incorporate them in the work of NIC. It has its inbuilt centres of excellence for artificial intelligence and data analysis. Thus it has been able to provide a consistent and upgraded service to the various sectors, these are mentioned below:-

1. Building up the local area network (LAN) that connects various governmental departments.

2. Enables video conferencing within secured gateways to save time, money and increase overall coordination.

3. It has developed a national knowledge network famously known as NKN that connects all the knowledge institutes in pan India.

4. It’s GIS and remote sensing programs help in locating the remote areas and allows location-based electronic deliveries of the services for planning and governance purposes.

5. Webcast services that enable organizations to organize events at local, national or international platforms.

6. Domain registrations allow the creation of a digital identity of the government.

7. National clouds enable the quick and accurate delivery of e-services and thus optimise the use of infrastructure and manpower.

8. Building and operating command and control centre for the delivery of critical government services.

9. NICNET enables communication network for governments all over India.

10. Huge integrated data centre for the storage of data of all e-government infrastructure.

11. NIC-CET enables a safer cyberspace for its users and for the security of the stored data of the government of India. 

NIC Full Form in Computer

NIC full form in computer stands for Network Interface Card. It is also commonly referred to as Ethernet or Network card. In order to connect all the gadgets with the network, NIC is one of the major and imperative components to enable connectivity. Thus, all the gadgets that are connected with the network must have a network interface card to enable the connectivity.  Even the switches built in the NIC framework are arranged in a way that it associates with the systems perfectly.  

It is one of the most important components of the network interface because without it no gadgets can be connected to any network. NIC can be present in the form of a card or a circuit board that is inbuilt in a PC or any other gadgets that are meant for networking so that it can act arbiter for organizing the network gateways in the computer or similar gadgets. It is present the second layer of OSI that acts as an information interface layer that incorporates the MAC address. 

It is a straightforward network and can be classified as the programmable card that changes with the electrical signals over the address as the electrical signal travels through the cable to the web, for example, in ethernet and in a remote. It also changes with the bits of radio signals like in wifi. To elaborate on the operation and functioning of NIC, a diagrammatic illustration is given below.

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Characteristics of NIC Network

1. Physical network address: All the network connectors have a universal and interesting physical address that is summoned onto the network interface card by the card producers. This special address is provided in order to recognize each individual card that interfaces with the network cable or media network. This is for the same reason that this particular address is also referred to as the Media Access Control (MAC) address. A MAC address is usually six bytes long and often appears as 00-00-86-47-F6-65 where the initial three characters or bytes are the ID of the merchant and the rest three reflects some special information.

2. Network Connection Port: A network card consists of two or more ports that are specially arranged in such a way that the arrangement can be put through a particular sort of arrangement of the cables. Some of the latest network interface cards are made up of double ports so that they can be connected to special arrangements of two network cable sorts. Thus choosing a particular card is needed so as to match a particular network media to utilize in a certain environment.

3. Status Indicator Lights: network connections are inbuilt with one or more light emanating Diode (Led} or famously known as status light that can provide data to the state of the network association. Most of the connectors are built-in with the interface status indicator that has the function of demonstrating a go flag from the organizer. If the interface light is not lit, it indicates that there is some serious malfunctioning with the cable or the physical connection. Most of the connectors possess a movement that flashes light every time there is a byte of data sent or received. If there is a constant flickering of the light, it means that there is abuse in the organization or there could be a framework that is interfering with the network interface with an arranged clamour.

Advantages and Disadvantages

There are certain advantages and disadvantages of NIC in computers that are listed below.

Advantages of NIC are:-

1. The communication speed offered by the NIC utilizing the web is highly ordinary in terms of gigabytes.

2. The dependability of NIC is very high for a good performing interface with the network.

3. Bulk information can be easily shared with numerous clients hassle-free and in a fraction of time.

4. Many gadgets that are present in the periphery of the concerned gadget can be associated using the number of ports of the NIC card.

Some of the disadvantages of the NIC are:-

1. In the case of NIC cable that consists of numerous wires that are badly arranged unlike in the case of a remote router.

2. As numerous peripheral systems or gadgets can be connected through a single port, the data shared is insecure and is available on the public network cloud.

3. The arrangements of the cable wire need to be proper for higher communications.