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RNP starts 2003 giving continuity to a series of innovation projects that had a great importance in last year's agenda


In January 2002, RNP was qualified as a Social Organization (SO) by the federal government. Consequently, its responsibility increased in regard to fostering research activities aiming at promoting the technological development of advanced networks in the country. For this reason, the Innovation Management created five working groups involving several education and research institutions: QoS WG, Directories WG, Voice over IP WG, Digital Video WG and Educational Applications through a Network WG. The aim of these Working Groups is to permit the creation of collaborative projects demonstrating the feasibility of using new protocols, services and computer network applications.

Moreover, it signed a partnership with Finep to sponsor Giga Project, whose aim is to create an experimental network of telecommunications and IP protocol convergence. This partnership predicts an investment of R$ 55,000,000 for the network, which will be initially installed in the Campinas-Rio de Janeiro axis. The CPqD (Centro de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento em Telecomunicações) and RNP are in charge of coordinating the project.

For the first time, the videoconference service started to be made available to the PoPs and RNP's units. Some PoPs began to run IPv6 and multicast. The two phases of the course "Professional Development for High School Math Teachers," promoted by Impa, were transmitted live. In the Forum of Technological Innovation and Applied Technologies in the Productive Network (Salão e Fórum de Inovação Tecnológica e Tecnologias Aplicadas na Cadeia Produtiva), it was time for the High Performance Metropolitan Network (ReMAV) in Natal to transmit, in real time and through the Internet, the programs of that city's University TV.

In order to improve the functionality of the network, RNP started signing partnerships with the institutions hosting the Points of Presence, in October. The partnership establishes the criteria to ensure the operation. A policy of use of RNP2 network was also implanted. It guarantees exclusive use of the academic network by education and research institutions, ensuring better connectivity and traffic.

Internationally, RNP activated its first direct connection with Europe. In February, RNP2 got a 2 Mbps link for communication with the Portuguese academic network (RCTS). Throughout the year, practically all the network infrastructure was updated. Its maximum speed, of 155 Mbps, was increased to 310 Mbps. Links between RNP2 and commercial networks were inaugurated or updated.

Encouraged by the Computer Science Law (Law # 8,248), the company Harris do Brasil gave RNP five radio circuits, with a capacity of 34 Mbps, in order to update the connection of the organizations using the backbone. Several institutions benefited from the new link, namely, the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, the Emílio Goeldi Museum in Pará, the Ministry of Education, the Federal Fluminense University (Universidade Federal Fluminense) and the Ministry of Science and Technology. The Security Incident Response Team (Cais) participated in the translation of the "Top 20 List" of Sans Institute, a list of the 20 most critical security vulnerabilities in the Internet.

In the social field, RNP got engaged in three projects: the distribution of routers for the connection of the education and research units with state networks; the Bola pra Frente project, to qualify young people to work with state-of-the-art technology; and the Quality of Life Program (Programa Qualidade de Vida), by Embrapa and Cepagri.

[RNP, 02.04.2003]

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