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The Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education sign joint investment program

On October 19, the Minister of Science and Technology Ronaldo Sardenberg and the Minister of Education Paulo Renato Souza signed, in Brasília, the Inter-Ministerial Program for the Maintenance of the National Network for Education and Research. The program involves joint investments to be made by the two ministries in the coming five years, totaling approximately R$215 million for the deployment of a new academic network, RNP2. The new backbone, expected to be in full operation by March 2000, will link up all 52 Federal Institutions of Higher Learning (IFES) and research institutes, using ATM technology. This new infrastructure will respond to the demand for greater quality in networking services for production traffic from the academic community. It will also give support to the development of new applications in higher learning and permit the start of interconnection testing of High Performance Metropolitan Networks (ReMAVs). RNP will be conducting trial runs in November in order to define ATM services to be procured for the new backbone.

The Brazilian academic network has been maintained these last ten years by MCT, with the introduction of the National Research Network backbone. According to the Inter-Ministerial Program, RNP will again be responsible for the planning, deployment, operation and coordination of the network together with the institutions that host its Points of Presence around the nation. The resources at hand will permit RNP to engage the most adequate technology to update network infrastructure in compliance with the needs of the community of users of its services. Over the last three years, the MCT budget for RNP has shown a downward curve in investments: R$13 million in 1996; R$11 million in 1997; and R$9.7 million in 1998. The program now being approved represents a considerable increase in available resources. It entails equal annual investments of the two ministries in the amount of R$21 million. For 1999, the agreement has been signed to guarantee R$7 million in the face of investments already made by MCT.

MEC and MCT have been holding discussions for some time as to a form of collaborating on a joint project in infrastructure and networking services that would provide backup to strategic applications in the Department of Higher Learning (SESU). One of the foreseen applications to be engendered with the new network is the introduction of Digital Theme Libraries. The new libraries will offer an electronic selection of periodicals thereby providing a reduction in distribution costs for the IFES libraries.

At present, the RNP backbone is based on the procurement of dedicated lines, a technology that no longer answers the needs of the academic community. ATM technology presents a better cost/benefit relationship as it offers greater availability of bandwidth in long-distance communication links at comparatively better costs. It allows for the use of 34 Mbps speeds in major backbone connections and for differentiated services.

In the new backbone architecture, points with much traffic congestion or ReMAV experiments will have speedier access. In addition, PoPs not requiring great bandwidth nor experimenting in networking will be linked, nonetheless, to at least 2 Mbps. Up until now, 2 Mbps has been the maximum backbone speed, but the new top speed will presently be converted to 34 Mpbs, 17 times faster than the current one, and the minimum will shift from 128 Kbps to 2 Mbps.

The new backbone will be introduced in three stages, subject to an initial period of testing. The ATM Pilot project, to begin in November, will include the PoPs in Federal District, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. It will rely on 155 Mbps access and on a one-month term to validate ATM services under contract. (RNP published an article on the ATM Pilot project on October 15, 1999). By the first three months of the next year, the stages for implementation of the new backbone will be initiated. The first stage will be in operation with the inauguration of the interconnection of the three Pilot PoPs, plus three others still to be defined. The definition of these others will depend on technical feasibility studies being performed at the telecommunications service company by RNP. The second stage will involve the connection of seven other PoPs (including points that connect ReMAVs and/or that concentrate experimental traffic): Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, Bahia, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do norte, Paraíba and Ceará. Finally, the new network will reach all the other 14 PoPs of RNP. The recently signed agreement will enable the procurement of telecommunications services, as well as the acquisition and update of equipment.

In the first half of 2000 a high capacity connection will be activated with STARTAP in the U.S., the center of the INTERNET2 project for international connections.

[RNP, 10.21.1999]