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The future of the advanced networks is called Clara

The Cooperação Latino-americana de Redes Avançadas (Latin-American Advanced Networks Cooperation) - CLARA - is the alliance that the academic networks of Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Cuba, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, and Chile have formed in order to materialize the interconnection of the Central and South Americas with the advanced networks of Europe.

The embryo of CLARA is in the project CAESAR of the @LIS Program of the European Community. It intends to build an Advanced Academic Network among the Latin America countries to further interconnect it with GEANT, its European equivalent.

The task is of maximum range to the academic and research communities of the participant countries. In the mark of @LIS, its main representatives met in Santiago, Chile, on 18 and 19 of last November, in the head-office of Conicyt, to discuss and to create agreements about the work mechanisms and the ways of participation and members of CLARA.

The sight since Europe

Elena Vilar Pascual, member of the European Community Cooperation Bureau, attended the meeting of CLARA in Santiago, as representative of the project CAESAR. According to her, establishing a connection between the academic networks of Latin America and Europe meets one of the fundamental objectives of @LIS: improving the connection capacity between both of them. "We want the conjoint research projects to multiply and there may be more users, that exist a broader community with access to the high capacity networks, allowing more advanced researches", she remarks, highlighting the importance of the project.

Besides, the beginning of this connection fulfills one of the aims of the European networks, that is to link the academic and research communities: the global interconnection. "Due to historic and cultural reasons, Latin America is evidently a region which we are interested to be linked with ", states Vilar Pascual.

The bet of the Latin America

On his part, Nelson Simöes, General Director of RNP (Brazil) and General Coordinator of CLARA, says that the main benefit to Latin America - if the project happens - will be the close collaboration between the region and Europe. "Today, to work with Europe, we need connections with North America. If we get a direct connection in 2003, all the projects that nowadays are not viable, because there isn't appropriate band width or innovative applications, would be possible to be carried out. The collaboration with the European researchers will raise us as region; we will leave a sort of limited collaboration and will move to a superior level. To Latin America this implies in development, quality, and qualification; it's the guarantee that our human resources will be trained in new technologies, that our countries will have access to a high level scenario and the confirmation that we aren't countries unable to compete in the Information Society, because we won't be on the margins of that process".

According to CLARA's General Coordinator, a second strategic reason is the importance of the construction of a Latin-American global network infrastructure. "That's a mark we've been pursuing for years and - thanks to @LIS - it is the first time we will have the possibility of using resources from the European Unity to generate this network".

The necessary governmental participation

Cathrin Stover, member of DANTE, organization that coordinates the Pan-European network GEANT and to which CLARA intends to connect, states that the transcendence of CLARA creates roots in its potential of transcontinental integration and Latin-American coordination: "CLARA has taken good decisions in integration. In Europe we are very impressed with the speed that it's been formed, because we took much longer. In five months, CLARA has carried out a definitely admirable work. Following this way, the aim of establishing a Latin-American network and a connection with Europe is totally viable".

But it's important to analyze the theme of the financing. The GEANT network is co-financed by the European Union in 50%. The other 50% is responsibility of the national networks of the 32 countries that don't belong to the European Union. "The network is not only formed by the 15 Member States of the European Union, we also have connected all the countries of eastern Europe, countries of the Mediterranean such as Malta, Cyprus and Israel, countries of the Balkans as the ones of the former Yugoslavia and the ones of the Baltic. All of them form a consortium that finances 50% of the GEANT's costs. Normally those funds come from the combination of the financial resources provided by the governments and institutions that form the national networks", explains Cathrin Stover.

An example is the RedIRIS (Spain) that since its foundation, in 1988, is financed with the financial resources provided by the government's Development and Research National Plan. "It is necessary to remark that those financial resources allow that RedIRIS reduce to zero all the costs, that is, to pay the connection until the point of presence in each one of the autonomous communities, to pay all the national network and the connections out of Europe, the Internet2, the worldwide research networks and, besides that, the free-of-charge service of Internet to all the universities and research institutes", explains its Director, Víctor Castelo, also present in the meeting in Santiago.

It is also important to state the importance of the participation and commitment of the national governments with their academic and/or advanced networks, since this is one of the conditions of European Union to finance the interconnection. "The financing of the @LIS would be during three years, but our idea of a successful initiative is that it may be sustainable in the medium and long term. So, one of the most important conditions is that, since the beginning, there is a support from the government of each country to the participant partner, that will be the national research network or the organization able to create it, if the network doesn't exist ", says Elena Vilar.

The governments' support is also a way to obtain political commitments. To Ms. Vilar, it's basic that the states understand that they will be the main beneficiaries if CLARA succeeds: "The creation of a regional network will permit a bigger collaboration and cooperative research. Besides, it will make possible the generation of economies of scale, reduction of costs, increase of the coverage, lower prices and higher speeds. All this without saying that an alliance like that would meet the interests of each government in what concerns to the relation with the European Union. So, besides a strategic interest we have a political interest".

source: http://apc.reuna.cl/index1.shtml?AA%20SL%20Session=c1c401c6758785401e96b873fd3cb5155&x=906

[RNP, 11.21.2002]