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Brazilian scientists linked to Latin America and Europe

Rede Clara enlarges international collaboration

On Monday, 20th September, the Brazilian institutions of high education and research started direct communication with the similar institutions in Europe and Chile through Rede Clara, a Latin-American network initiative. The aim of this project is to integrate the education and research communities of Latin America and Caribbean through a network understructure with support to advanced applications and services.

Rede Clara started up on 31st August with the link of its points of presence in Brazil and Chile. At the same day a 622-Mbps connection was established with the point of presence of the Pan-European Network (Géant) in Madrid, Spain. This is the first direct link between advanced networks of two countries of Latin America and from these to Europe.

“I’m sure that this direct link will be a catalyst to a greater collaboration between Europe and Latin America”, said the Executive Council President of the Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional (FCCN), Pedro Veiga. FCCN is responsible for the Portuguese academic network, RCTS.

The Brazilian representative of Rede Clara is Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (RNP-OS), a social organization responsible for the inter-ministerial program of academic network of Ministry of Education (MEC) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT). The link of RNP network to the Latin-American project is made by a 155-Mbps connection of initial capacity. All of the 214 user-organizations of education and research of RNP are automatically linked to Rede Clara.

The role of networks on international collaboration

The national networks of education and research are used in the developed countries as a strategic understructure to several applications. In the emerging countries they are an essential foundation to the competition in the new society of global knowledge.

Rede Clara will act as a support to shared use of data, sensors, digital contents, scientific gathering, hardware, and software and collaboration services among the countries. The use of complex devices or single laboratories (particle accelerator, electronic microscopes, telescopes, environmental sensors, etc.) and the treatment of great volume of information, associated to the distributed computing power (weather forecast, genome database, earth sciences, astronomy, physics, etc.) will compose the necessary base to each country be able to face its challenges of health, education, environment, agriculture and innovation.

Brazil will be directly benefited in projects as: Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR), a telescope installed in Chile and with 30% of Brazilian share; Experimento de Larga Escala na Biosfera-Atmosfera da Amazônia (LBA), which integrates more than 1,500 scientists in 15 countries; and, Compact Muon Spectrometer (CMS), one of the four detectors that will be used in the next CERN’S particle accelerator, the larger worldwide physics laboratory of subatomic particles, in Switzerland.

“We have been searching an effective link among Latin America education and research communities for a long time. Now we are better prepared to collaborate in the knowledge advance, in the creation capacity and in our cultural and economic integration. This is surely a milestone for everybody is working to regionally integrate science and technology”, highlighted Nelson Simões, General Director of RNP and Rede Clara president.

Two years preparing Clara

The original idea of a Latin-American network and its link to Europe started on June 2002, during the meeting of Alliance for the Information Society (@lis), a program supported by the European Union. There, it was signed the document that is known as Declaração de Toledo, due the name of the city receiving the event.

The Declaração de Toledo was the initial kick to form Cooperação Latino-Americana de Redes Avançadas, which aimed forming an understructure to link the advanced Latin-American networks (Rede Clara) and creating a NGO to represent the interests of this group (Clara organization).

Also in the ambit of @lis the América Latina Interconectada com a Europa (Alice) project was generated, a great collaboration project involving European Commission, Clara organization, the research networks Rediris (Spain), Renater (France), Garr (Italy) and FCCN (Portugal), and Dante organization, responsible for Géant network. The Alice project was responsible, in a great manner, for making the dream of Rede Clara real.

“There is no doubt that a new age of solidarity and approach between Latin America and European people is boring”, celebrated the representative of CR2NET, academic network of Costa Rica, Guillermo Loria.

The @lis program coordinator, Antonio Crespo, highlighted that Alice was possible “due to the great effort performed by all people that trust, with energy, in this adventure”.

18 AL countries will integrate Rede Clara

The Rede Clara implementation was possible due to the collaborative work of technicians of several countries, including the Grupo de Engenharia da Rede Clara, developed by the Centro de Engenharia e Operações da RNP. During the next days, the activation of the main network ring will be concluded, with the connection of Argentina, Mexico and Panama. The initial capacity of the ring among the countries is 155 Mbps.

Until the end of 2004, seven more countries will be connected to Rede Clara: Uruguay, Peru, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. The next step will include Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras and Paraguay.

[RNP, 22.09.2004]