This proposal would develop WHREN (Western Hemisphere Research and Education Networks) to address the existing and future needs for improved North American (especially U.S.)-South American connectivity. This proposal specifically focuses on the need for connectivity through new links, LILA (Links Interconnecting Latin America).
The goal of the WHREN project is interconnecting North America to emerging aggregation points in South America, and evolving the connections, resources and economies. By providing a hybrid of network resources to support high performance computing and networking services between North America and South America, a robust, fault-tolerant, high-capacity set of interconnections should ensure superior networking infrastructure support for e-science across the two continents over the next five years.
Intellectual Merit: Science research and education between the U.S. and Latin America was being adversely impacted by a lack of capacity to exchange data and to access valuable resources in South America. The Western Hemisphere Research and Education Network - Links Interconnecting Latin America (WHREN-LILA) NSF IRNC award # OCI-0441095, provided a methodology for participation of network cyberinfrastructure leaders and the engagement of the research and education communities towards increasing discovery and scholarship. WHREN-LILA successfully established a consortium to co-operate the network links between the U.S. and Latin America, and collaborate among Research and Education network providers and users in the Western Hemisphere. Prior to the IRNC program, network links for research and education consisted of five 45 Mbps connections between the U.S. and four countries (two links for Brazil). Now, through co-operation and collaboration, is greater than 20 Gbps, with connectivity to every country in South and Central America, and one third of the Caribbean. Broader Impacts: A number of U.S. science initiatives depend critically upon facilities or environments located in Latin America. One example is observational astronomy. Astronomical observatories located, or to be located, in the Caribbean and South America include Arecibo Observatory, Pierre Auger, the Gemini South, CTIO and NOAO optical telescopes and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (the latter two in Chile). Another example is the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). This intergovernmental organization coordinates research into environmental and socio-economic change in the Americas, and it counts 17 member countries in the Latin America area as well as the U.S. and Canada. Also, NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) project seeks to provide access to the ISS for scientific investigators worldwide, including those in the Latin America. All of these U.S.-led initiatives now depend crucially upon high-speed connectivity between the U.S. and Latin America. Several federal agencies currently operate networks in Latin America using point-to-point low-bandwidth circuits. The WHREN/LILA project provided a coordinated and effective approach to these connectivity needs.
