The Works of DANTE - Issue 6
Celebrating 20 Years of FCCN – Driving Research Networking in Portugal
This October marks the 20th anniversary of the Portuguese NREN, FCCN. The Works of DANTE asked FCCN’s chairman, Pedro Veiga for his views on how the community had changed in that time.
Congratulations on 20 years of FCCN. Why was the organisation originally created?
FCCN was created when Portugal joined CERN with the initial objective of developing High-Performance Computing facilities for the R&D Community in Portugal, specifically for the High-Energy Physicists. Shortly after the installation of a Convex mainframe it became clear that we had to develop networking to allow researchers to access the system remotely.
How has research networking changed in Portugal in the past 20 years?
The initial networking activities started around 1984, but 1986 marks our real beginning. Research networking in Portugal slowly built momentum until 1996 when, in the framework of the National Strategy for the Information Society, the government decided to invest in the reinforcement of the R&E network for universities and its extension to schools.
Until 1997 an extremely closed telecommunications market (that only recently showed some signs of starting to move) created a lot of difficulties in building an advanced network. At the beginning of 1997 our international connectivity was only 1 Mbps, despite the fact that Portugal participated in the COSINE* project from the very beginning.
A decisive moment for the evolution of FCCN was the acquisition, in 2004, of an optical cable going from the capital, Lisbon, to the North of Portugal, Braga, (400 km/245 miles) along the Atlantic coast where major universities are located. This enabled the provision of advanced communication facilities to the more demanding R&D projects.
Has this affected the way that FCCN has developed as an organisation?
Of course FCCN has undergone significant change in staff number and skills to adapt the organisation to the new challenges of research networking. In addition to advanced networking we developed expertise in other areas relevant for the R&E communities: digital libraries, wireless communications and mobility, and security - in line with the work developed inside TERENA and DANTE. This international cooperation was a key driving force to help FCCN to have a greater dimension in its work. At the same time we have pioneered some areas such as networking in schools.
FCCN has long been connecting schools in Portugal. How has this developed in the last ten years?
We recently completed a new phase in our project of connecting schools to the Portuguese NREN. This process started in 1997, when we connected all public and private primary and secondary schools to the Internet using ISDN (1 B-Channel). Shortly afterwards, we connected all public libraries, museums, and teacher training centres. Then we moved to connect all Portuguese schools (11 000) using 128 kbps (2 ISDN B-channels) and, recently, we migrated all schools to broadband using ADSL. This was been completed by the end of 2005. So yes, we have been connecting schools for a long time.
What are the short-term goals for FCCN and research networking in Portugal?
We are extending our optical cable to Spain, to connect to RedIRIS, at two points: Elvas-Badajoz on the East border and Valença-Vigo in the North. We are also implementing more lambdas in our cable infrastructure for grid projects.
What do you think the next 20 years holds for research networking in Europe?
Well, in this area making plans 20 years ahead is impossible. However in the near future there are a few directions that are in our priority list: create a grid infrastructure for our national projects with a seamless integration with the European wide network; security and all it’s dimensions; lambda switching on-demand; high-definition video-transmission and conferencing; the challenge of helping universities to build their campus wide networks with the capacity to match the characteristics of the Wide Area Network (WAN). All these initiatives will help our users get the most out of their networking facilities.
To mark the 20th anniversary, a special conference took place in Lisbon, from 23rd to 24th October, where the GÉANT2 Policy Committee chairman, Vasilis Maglaris gave a presentation on the key aspects of GÉANT2. In addition, a HD-Video on FCCN and its work has been produced and distributed to the user community.
To learn more about the celebrations visit www.20anos.fccn.pt
COSINE: In 1987 a number of European countries, co-operatively with the European Commission established the COSINE initiative. Cosine had two objectives. The first objective was to establish a common pan-European infrastructure to connect the National Research and Education networks together. The second objective was to foster the implementation of Open Systems. The initial network built by the COSINE project, IXI (International X25 Infrastructure), connected 18 countries together using for the most part 64Kbps leased circuits. Learn more here: http://www.dante.net/server/show/conWebDoc.341/viewPage/1
