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Harris and RNP finish installing radio circuits

The Federal Fluminense University (Universidade Federal Fluminense - UFF), in Rio de Janeiro, the Emílio Goeldi Museum in Pará (MPEG) and the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco - UFRPE) were the last institutions to benefit from the agreement made by Harris do Brasil, a company in the field of equipment and microwave services, and RNP. This partnership included the donation, with the support of the Computer Science Law (Law # 8,248), of five 34 Mbps radio circuits to be used by teaching and research institutions using RNP2 backbone.

The connection of the UFRPE, which was formerly made with a 512 Kpbs leased line from the telecommunications operator Telemar, got 66 times faster. In Rio de Janeiro, UFF had already been using radio equipment sponsored by Finep, but the connection was of only 5.5 Mbps. At Goeldi Museum, the increase was also considerable: its former connection, made through Telemar, was limited to 128 Kbps. The University of Brasília and the Ministry of Education had already benefited from this partnership.

UFRPE's link with RNP's Point of Presence in Pernambuco (PoP-PE) has been working since January 31st, and it has shown good results. According to José Rodrigues Lemos, director of UFRPE's Information Technology Unit, the main sectors benefiting from the link are the ones that interact directly with the organizations that foster research, the ones that develop academic activities, and the ones linked to administrative processes.

Zuleika Tenório, technical director of the PoP-PE, claims the link is stabler, free from failure, and working without jams, thus improving the quality of the support. "Furthermore, there are no more monthly costs with the local operator," she adds.

On February 13th, Roberto Amaral, Minister of Science and Technology, symbolically inaugurated Goeldi Museum's link with the PoP-PA, which had been functioning since November 11th, 2002. For Carlos Henrique Milhomem, head of the Data Processing Center at the museum, one of the advantages of the new connection is the dramatic increase in the interaction between the Zoobotanical Park and the Research Campus, which are geographically distant.

In Rio de Janeiro, UFF's access to Rio Network (Rede Rio), which was totally jammed before, has now become a free two-way street, according to Michael Stanton, RNP's Innovation Director and UFF professor. "It has become possible for the UFF community both to access the Internet and to offer information services to external users."

In Michael Stanton's opinion, the partnership permitted RNP to have a pioneering role in offering broadband access to some client institutions located in cities where there are RNP's PoPs: "this solution is ideal for situations in which there are difficulties in installing fixed connections (by cable)."

According to Ari Frazão, manager of RNP's Engineering and Operation Center (Centro de Engenharia e Operações), in spite of the difficulties faced to carry out the infrastructure work, due to the limited budget of the universities and the federal research organizations, the connection is worth it. "Hiring a telecommunications operator to install a link with the same speed as the one that was configured (34 Mbps) would cost more than R$ 10,000 a month".

[RNP, 02.21.2003]