Volume 4, Issue 4
September 30, 2008

The Western Hemisphere Research and Education Networks (WHREN)-Links Interconnecting Latin America (LILA) Report summarizes activities from participating networks. The WHREN-LILA Report is published under National Science Foundation (NSF) Award # 0441095 and Academic Network at São Paulo (ANSP) award Projeto Fapesp no. 04/14414-2.

September 2008 Issue:

• WHREN-LILA Activities
• FIU-CIARA Activities
• AMPATH Activities
• AtlanticWave Activities
• CENIC and Pacific Wave Activities
• Pacific Wave Activities
• CUDI Activities
• CLARA Activities
• RNP Activities
• ANSP/NARA Activities

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

WHREN-LILA Activities

IPv6 is enabled on WHREN-LILA connections. RedCLARA, RNP, ANSP, REUNA and others have IPv6 enabled on their networks.

As part of the WHREN collaboration, the CLARA NOC shall provide NOC services for the WHREN-LILA circuits. The Indiana University Global NOC provides NOC services for the WHREN-LILA circuits. The CLARA NOC services will augment information by which the WHREN collaboration can proactively monitor and manage the WHREN-LILA links and correlate data from multiple resources.

For more information about WHREN-LILA, visit http://www.ciara.fiu.edu/whren

FIU-CIARA Activities

A Global Cyberbridges Hurricane Mitigation project highlight was sent to the NSF and received positive feedback. The project is a collaborative research project that involves 15 students and 5 faculty members from three academic departments at Florida International University (FIU), with collaboration from the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China along with several other US and international universities and IBM Research.

Researchers have been investigating a layered approach to provide accurate and timely forecast of hurricane landfall. The system would be accessed from a web-based portal. A prototype of the system will be available for a demonstration in October 2008.

Upcoming events:

Upcoming events:

October 13th, 2008 the Caribbean Emerging R&E Networks Special
Interest Group will meet in the afternoon at the I2 Members Meeting.

October 20-22nd Chinese American Networking Symposium hosted by
Indiana University.

Heidi is on the program committee. Sessions will cover diverse networking subjects from NOC services, Security, Monitoring, IPv6, and Global e-Science Applications including
Hurricane Mitigation (Global CyberBridges Project), Weather Monitoring, Lake Ecosystems and Epidemiology, and e-VLBI radio astronomy, as well as optical astronomy.

The UltraLight / PLaNetS Networking and Data Management Tutorial is December 2 , 2008.

For more information on FIU-CIARA, visit their website at http://ciara.fiu.edu/

AMPATH Activities

University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) connects to the AMPATH International Exchange Point. This connection will allow UVI to participate in the U.S. R&E and international networking communities to augment its programs of science and education research. For example, the UVI marine sciences graduate program’s research on coral reef science will provide scientists and students with more options to utilize network-aware tools for data intensive science.

For more information about AMPATH, please visit: http://www.ampath.net/

AtlanticWave Activities

On September 9, 2008, the Arecibo antenna achieved the first eVLBI fringes over the Arecibo-EVN baseline achieving throughput of a data bandwidth of 512 megabits per second. “The 256Mbps demonstration last May at the TERENA conference placed Puerto Rico firmly on the worldwide eVLBI map, the latest one shows that we truly have made the bigger league, said Dr. Arun Venkataraman, Head, Computer Department, NAIC/Arecibo Observatory.”

AtlanticWave is providing a layer2 service for Arecibo to participate in e-VLBI experiments with the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE), where the correlation takes place of the data streams that are collected from the radio antennas of the experiment. The data stream from Arecibo utilizes the IRNC link for Translight/Starlight to reach Europe. A goal of AtlanticWave is to make use of IRNC links for international science collaboration. Extending layer 2 services to JIVE is made possible through collaboration with Translight/StarLight, SurfNet and the use of CaveWave.

AtlanticWave will be available for Super Computing 2008 events. Groups interested in using AtlanticWave for SC08 activities ( Nov. 15-21, 2008, in Austin, Texas) should contact the AtlanticWave engineering team with their questions and requirements by sending email to the following address: request@atlanticwave.net

For more information on the conference, please see http://sc08.supercomputing.org/index.php

For more information about AtlanticWave, visit http://www.atlanticwave.net

CENIC

CENIC CEO Jim Dolgonas was honored to speak before the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, the Mexican House of Representatives, as a participant in a forum entitled Red Nacional del Conocimiento: Estrategia Nacional para la Conectividad (A National Knowledge Network: A National Strategy for Connectivity). The forum took place on August 26, 2008 at the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro in Mexico City, home of the Chamber of Deputies, one of the two houses of the Mexican Congress of the Union.

Distinguished participants included, among others, the former President of the Chamber of Deputies Directive Board Ruth Zavaleta Salgado, President of the Council of Political Coordination Héctor Larios Córdova, President of the Special Commission for the Promotion of Mexican Digital Access Antonio Vega Corona, Undersecretary for Communications of the Ministry of Communications and Transport Rafael Noel del Villar Alrich, Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission for the Government of India Sam Pitroda, and Secretary-General of ANUIES (National Association of Universities and Institutes of Higher Learning) Rafael López Castañares. Panels in state and federal-level infrastructure as well as university cooperation featured yet more luminaries in the realm of Mexican high-performance networking.

Jim Dolgonas's presentation, Knowledge Networking: Exploiting California's Experience, discussed the creation and governance of CENIC and its funding and fee structure, the importance of broadband networking as a major motivator of economic and research-based vigor, and the value of using a separate, fiber-based network to serve the needs of higher education and research. The presentation also included an excellent sample of the types of international research collaborations made possible by high-performance networking, as well as discussing the value of such a network to intra-Mexican efforts.

Read full article at: http://www.cenic.org/publications/cenictoday/Aug08_CT.html

For more information about CENIC, visit http://www.cenic.org

Pacific Wave Activities

Jacqueline Brown and John Silvester attended the APAN 26: Sustainable Networking meeting held in Queenstown , New Zealand August 4-8, 2008 . There John discussed with representatives from the AARNet network how to provision dynamic circuit connectivity from AARNet to Internet2 and National Lambda Rail (NLR) through Pacific Wave. The goal is to have a proof of concept demonstration by the end of 2008.

At CENIC's XD Workshop John Silvester facilitated a discussion of the "Lessons Learned" during the Monday, September 15, 2008 demonstrations and gave a presentation entitled on "eResearch Collaboration Across the Pacific" September 16, 2008 which showcased the capabilties for international collaborations using Pacific Wave and other international R&E resources.

Larry Smarr of CalIT2 is going to Australia for a whirlwind tour to demonstrate and promote Optiputer and Optiportal applications which is anticipated to increase use of the Translight/Pacific Wave connections in the near future.

Pacific Northwest Gigapop and the University of Washington will be hosting the upcoming 8th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Seattle , Washington October 1-2, 2008 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center .

Pacific Wave engineers and Supercomputing 2008 (SC08) conference organizers are working on installing a connection between the conference site in Austin , Texas and Pacific Wave for the upcoming November Conference.

For more information, see the Pacific Wave website at www.pacificwave.net

CUDI Activities

As a result of the Call-CUDI SUN, the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos and the Universidad Veracruzana now house two laboratories that consist of a T-1000 server to provide services to 20 terminals SunRay2. These terminals will function as access points and network consulting and represent an opportunity for community members CUDI increase its infrastructure and improve the services they provide to their users.

Most of the terminals are in remote facilities or institutions from the servers in order to test the technology of the IP networks and linking Internet2. The server has to provide access to all terminals in the country, employing load balancing and is subject to the bandwidth available to universities for I2.

The institutions that will share the servers are:

• La Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas
• La Universidad de Guadalajara
• La Universidad de Sonora
• La Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
• La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Read full article at: http://www.cudi.edu.mx/boletin/2008/09_boletin_septiembre.html

For more information about the meeting, and other CUDI activities, visit http://www.cudi.edu.mx/

CLARA Activities

The Regional Fund for Digital Innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean – FRIDA – announces the opening of its 2008 Summons and invites regional research organizations to present projects seeking to be financed through the fund.

The form and framework for project proposals are available at the FRIDA website under “Types of support/ 2008 call”. Those organizations interested in applying to receive support from FRIDA must email their proposal to convocatoria2008@programafrida.net by August 15, 2008 before 19:00 UTC. FRIDA will start notifying the chosen proposals on November 14 2008.

FRIDA is a regional initiative made up by the contributions of CEA/ IDRC (Connectivity and Equity in the Americas/ International Development Research Center), the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (ICA), the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) which is also the manager of the Program.

FRIDA operates as fund of competitive projects providing financial support to projects developed by regional research teams through small grants. Projects are selected in an annual summons.

For more information about FRIDA, visit http://apc-clara.reuna.cl/canal1.shtml?http://apc-clara.reuna.cl/nuevoeng.shtml?AA_SL_Session=bcfe653e2e911bb67295601b08ff28d1&x=12642

For more information about CLARA, visit http://www.redclara.net

RNP Activities

On August 28 & 29, the Workshop on Platforms II cryptography to Infrastructure Public Key and Applications was held in Florianopolis (SC). The event, organized by the Computer Security Laboratory (LabSEC) of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), was conducted by the Brazilian Chamber of Electronic Commerce (Camara-e.net) and had support from the National Network of Education and Research (RNP), The National Institute of Information Technology (ITI), the Institute of Real Estate Registry of Brazil (IRIB) and the College of Notaries Brazil (CNB-SP). Two weeks prior, in Rio de Janeiro, the RNP hosted the inaugural meeting of its two experimental new services: Infrastructure of keys for the Public Education (ICP-EDU) andAcademic Community Federica (CAFE).

The workshop in Florianopolis consisted of lectures, panels and demonstrations of projects LabSEC and its partners who represented the RNP, Iara Machado, and the Department of Innovation. Two lectures were given on the new experimental services of the organization: Infrastructure Public Key for Education and Research (ICP-EDU) and Academic Community Federica (CAFE).

To see the full program of lectures and demonstrations during the workshop, visit: http://www.labsec.ufsc.br/arquivos/cronograma.pdf and http://www.labsec.ufsc.br/arquivos/demos . pdf

Read full article at http://www.rnp.br/noticias/2008/not-080919.html

For more information on RNP, visit their website at http://www.rnp.br/en/index.php

ANSP/NARA Activities

During the 60 th Meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC), held at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), the TIDIA Ae (Electronic Learning) project, funded by FAPESP, was presented to event participants. They got to view the initial version of the environment management learning and collaborative research project.

The TIDIA-Ae project brings together more than 150 researchers from 20 laboratories of the leading universities in the state of Sao Paulo, and aims to promote training of human resources and scientific and technological production, applied to education, to help the institutions of education and research.

Version 1.1 of the Ae environment offers its users tools for managing courses and collaborative projects, as the repository of information and interactivity between participants. Using Ae, the user can keep a personal profile, a shared agenda, define and monitor the plan of study for each subject or the plan of project activities, communicate with the participants through tools of interaction, provide and share content teaching and technical.

Read full article at http://www.nara.org.br/central-de-noticias/tidia-ae-lanca-nova-plataforma-de-e-learning/

For more information about ANSP/NARA activities, visit http://www.nara.org.br/

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

The WHREN-LILA newsletter is intended to provide useful, up-to-date information about WHREN-LILA through short articles with web links and email addresses. Newsletters will be posted on the WHREN-LILA website (www.ciara.fiu.edu/whren). If you have colleagues who would like to subscribe to this monthly newsletter, send them to: http://www.ampath.net/mailman/listinfo/whren-today.

If you would like to be removed from the WHREN Monthly Report mail list, you may unsubscribe at: http://www.ampath.net/mailman/listinfo/whren-today.