Lisbon - On Monday, February 25th,the Brazilian and Portuguese ministers of Science and Technology launched the first interconnection between the academic networks of the two countries (respectively RNP2 and RCTS). According to the Brazilian minister of Science and Technology, Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, the link " has great importance, both symbolically and practically."

First of all, the fact that the link has already been implanted clearly shows the sense of dynamism and concreteness that both ministries wish to give to this cooperation initiative. Secondly, the link should be extremely useful in supporting P&D activities between both countries. Finally, it represents the first example of the desired involvement of the business sector in P&D activities together with academic institutions of both countries - claimed Sardenberg, referring to the participation of the companies Portugal Telecom and Embratel in the initiative.

The new link, whose capacity is of 2 Mbps, was offered by Portugal Telecom and Embratel and is aimed at promoting cooperation in three areas:

• investigation and development in the processing of the Portuguese language;
• investigation and development in new generation Internet networks and advanced applications; and
• collaborative work via networks and videoconference among researchers and high school students.

Jacob Palis, director of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, believes that the interaction between the two Portuguese speaking nations, which has been naturally growing, should greatly increase as a result of the new connection.

RNP and FCCN make an agreement to foster research

The National Teaching and Research Network (RNP), which operates RNP2, and the National Foundation for Scientific Computing ( Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional - FCCN), which operates the Science, Technology and Society Network (RCTS), have made an agreement to promote studies in the fields of IPv6, videoconference and quality of service (QoS). Minister Sardenberg listed IPv6, the protocol of new generation Internet networks, as one of the first items in the agenda of cooperative activities. RNP's CEO, Nelson Simões, also stressed the importance of the research in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP):

IPv6 is certainly a very important topic in Europe. This year we will start a project that can be articulated with the initiatives to be launched in Europe (6NET e 6ix). Another research topic which will use the link for its promotion is the Natural Language Processing. The FCCN is also interested in cooperating in terms of security. Although this is not one of the items listed on the agreement, we are ready to cooperate - said Simões.

Internet decentralization

This is the first direct connection between Latin America and Europe for scientific and technological cooperation. " A lot has been said about the integration of Latin America and Europe, as well as about the decentralization of the global Internet. This is the first step in this direction", declared Nelson Simões to RNP News. In an interview to the site of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), RNP's director explained why the several academic networks are connected to the United States nowadays:

It happens because we still use a model that centralizes the connections on a single point, which has a lot to do with the fact that the Internet was born in the United States. Therefore, with this integration, we are contributing to make the global Internet stronger. The memorandum of understanding signed by FCCN, RNP and the telecommunications companies highlights that this connection "can serve as an important experience to support future projects of interconnection of regional networks made by the Alliance for the Information Society (@LIS), a cooperation program involving the European Union and Latin America." Through RCTS, RNP has direct access to GEANT, the Pan-European backbone. In order to interconnect FCCN's and RNP's networks, the underwater optical cable Atlantis 2, which links South America directly to Europe and Africa, was used.

Still in the month of February, Brazil and Germany signed a protocol of intentions predicting, among other things, the interconnection of RNP to the German academic network Deutsche Forschungsnetz (DFN). Nelson Simões claims that RNP has made contacts in Latin America so that the same kind of partnership can be established in this region. The first potential partners are Chile and Argentina since they belong to the Americas Path Network (Ampath) project, to which Brazil is also integrated.

Authorities participated in videoconference during signature of pact between nations

The signature of the agreement between Brazil and Portugal was simultaneously broadcast to the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Brasília. Secretaries of government, international authorities and representatives of several sectors of the network community, as well as the business sector, could participate by means of a videoconference tool. The video of the event was recorded and is available in RNP's server (see below).

The Portuguese Minister of Science and Technology, José Mariano Gago, declared that this agreement marks a new relationship between the connections to be made involving the Portuguese speaking countries as a whole. In Gago's opinion, the interconnection will permit thinking about the implementation of new database, libraries and joint digital files.

An important aspect stressed by the people participating in the videoconference is the increase of the digital contents in Portuguese in the Internet. "Enriching the Internet with contents of its own language is fundamental to any country, both in strategic terms and in regards to education itself", claimed Nelson Simões. To the president of Unesco's Portuguese commission, Diogo Pires Aurélio, the officialization of this agreement was convenient. According to him, the project will permit modern technological resources to be used in order to spread the Portuguese language.

The Portuguese and Brazilian Ministers of Science and Technology predict a joint investment of US$ 1 million in the activities related to computer processing of the Portuguese language. The first step will be to increase the contact between the P&D groups on computer linguistics in both countries. Next, there will be a workshop where the guidelines to concrete activities will be summarized. Once they have these guidelines, the ministries will provide funds to enable the activities to proceed.

Minister Sardenberg finished his speech saying that the combination of three aspects crowns the months of articulations between Brazil and Portugal: " the action on infrastructure (through the Internet link), the action on a central strategic theme (contents and processing of the Portuguese language), and the action of application spreading (through the cooperative work among students) ."