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Goeldi Museum gets faster connection to RNP2

The Emílio Goeldi Museum, in Pará, has had a new connection to RNP2 since the 11th. A radio circuit with a capacity of 34 Mbps, donated by the company Harris do Brasil, was used to link the museum to RNP's Point of Presence in Pará (PoP-PA). The improvement was great: the former connection was limited to 128 Kbps.

This is the third institution to use radio equipment to get connected to the Brazilian academic network. In July, RNP celebrated the activation of similar links to serve the Ministry of Education and the University of Brasilia (UnB). On that occasion, the dean of UnB, Lauro Morhy, rejoiced, declaring that the partnership between RNP and Harris represented "an important contribution to support academic research".

The migration of the Goeldi Museum's network to the new connection is being made gradually. It is predicted that the entire museum will be using the new link by next Friday, November 22.

Vanner Fernandes Vasconcellos, technical coordinator of Pop-PA, says that, in the past, the connection of the museum to the PoP was made through the local telecommunications operator, Telemar, "probably using optical fibers." According to Vasconcellos, the radio link is working perfectly and it is "as fast as a link via copper cable or optical fiber." One of the technicians at the Goeldi Museum informed that, during the tests, the data transference rates reached were higher than 120 Kbps. Before, this rate had never exceeded 20 Kbps.

Vasconcellos participated in the training offered by RNP and Harris to the technicians at the PoPs and institutions that received the MicroStar H 7GHz 1E3+2xE1 radios. The course was offered at the Training Center of Harris do Brasil in Barueri, São Paulo, in September. The technical coordinator of the PoP-PA claimed that the support given by RNP and Harris in the configuration of the equipment was "total and unconditional".

The Goeldi Museum

The Emílio Goeldi Museum, in Pará, has the mission of producing and spreading knowledge and scientific collections about natural and socioeconomic systems related to the Amazon. Created on October 6, 1866 by Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna, the museum was consolidated by Emílio Goeldi from 1894 to 1907. In April 1955, the Goeldi Museum was connected to the National Institute of Research on the Amazon and maintained by the current CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). In 1983, the museum got its autonomy, starting to act as an independent research unit, directly linked to CNPq.

Carlos Henrique Milhomem, head of the Data Processing Center at the museum, says that there are great expectations regarding the new link:

- Thanks to the new link, the interaction between our two complexes (the Zoo-botanical Park and the Research Campus), which are geographically distant, will increase dramatically, facilitating not only the management, research and access to the Internet, but also the use of the Intranet and the access to information in databanks. Several projects that were being delayed due to the lack of infrastructure will be carried out again - explains Milhomem.

The next institutions to receive radio links are the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), in Rio de Janeiro, and the Universidade Federal Rural in Pernambuco (UFRPE). The inauguration of UFF's link is expected to happen at the end of November. As for the one at UFRPE, there are no predictions since the public bid for the required infrastructure work was delayed.

[RNP, 11.19.2002]