RNP > RNP News > 2005 News

Brazil Makes Strides Addressing Digital Divide

Science Grid This Week

Katie Yurkewicz

08.24.2005

A meeting between two physicists at a conference in 2001 has helped lead to a success in addressing the digital divide—the difference in computing and connectivity between the developed and the developing world.

"I was concerned about upgrading Brazil's computing capacity for high energy physics," said Alberto Santoro from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). "After reading a paper on grid computing, I approached one of the paper's authors, Harvey Newman from the California Institute of Technology, to talk about Brazil getting involved in grids."

The International Committee on Future Accelerators Standing Committee on Interregional Connectivity, which Newman chairs, had just decided that the digital divide would be a main focus of its activities. The committee started with Latin America, holding its 2002 workshop at UERJ. Representatives from Brazil's National Research and Education Network (RNP), network providers and the local community attended to discuss network requirements for scientific research.

"Under the leadership of Nelson Simões, the RNP Director-General, we are working to align Brazilian research networking with the best of what is done elsewhere," said Michael Stanton, RNP Director of Innovation. "The RNP national aggregate capacity has increased from 250 Mbps in 2002 to 1.8 Gbps in early 2005, and we are upgrading the links in the core network, which connects the national capital, Brasília, and nine state capitals, to 2.5 and 10 Gbps waves by October."

In addition to helping Brazilian high-energy physics researchers make their case to the national networks for higher bandwidth capacity, Newman and other Caltech researchers provide network and grid computing advice and hardware and software assistance to the scientists from UERJ and other institutions in Brazil, traveling to South America several times a year for ongoing development.

"We now have a better bandwidth—up to 1 Gbps via the Project GIGA infrastructure—and advanced videoconferencing and grid computing technology to use in our physics collaborations with Caltech, Fermilab and CERN," said Santoro.

"Latin America is an excellent example of initial success in bridging the digital divide, something we hope to emulate in other regions of the world," added Newman. "But there is still much work to do, as other regions of Brazil and Latin America still have very slow networks or none at all."

Learn more at the RNP and ICFA-SCIC Web sites.

source: http://www.interactions.org/sgtw/2005/0824/brazil_more.html