Network connections between the U.S. and Latin America. |
Connecting with colleagues and data, and participation in state-of-the-art scientific research, can be a challenge for scientists in Latin America, whose network connectivity to each other and the rest of the world is a fraction of what it is within and between North America and Europe. The WHREN-LILA collaboration hopes to bridge this divide by increasing the bandwidth between the east and west coasts of North and South America for the benefit of researchers and educators on both continents.
"WHREN-LILA is supporting science and grid applications in Latin America," says Julio Ibarra, Executive Director of the Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment at Florida International University. "Our first flagship application that really requires network resources is high-energy physics, but there are also interesting projects in fields such as astronomy, ecology, genomics and the geosciences that will benefit from new and better links."
WHREN, which stands for Western Hemisphere Research and Education Networks, addresses existing and future needs for improved North American to South American connectivity, promoting more effective peering of existing academic networks. LILA, or Links Interconnecting Latin America, provides links between existing networks. LILA connects network exchange points in the U.S. and Latin America with two links: one between Miami and São Paulo, Brazil; and another between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
The WHREN-LILA consortium is working towards increasing collaboration in many areas of science and education, starting with physics, astronomy, biodiversity and ecology. The first targets are existing projects that include researchers throughout the Western Hemisphere, such as the well-known telescopes in Chile and Mexico that have many users in the United States. A group of physicists from Brazil is already making use of the Miami-São Paulo link to further their participation in experiments in the United States and Europe.
"We have been simulating events for the DZero experiment at Fermilab in Illinois using the SAMGrid infrastructure," says Sérgio Novaes, a physicist from the State University of São Paulo. "Over the past two years we have transferred more than six terabytes of data to Fermilab using this link. We also intend to start participating in the grid infrastructure for the CMS experiment in Switzerland this fall, where the increased bandwidth will be very important."
WHREN-LILA is partially funded by the National Science Foundation through the International Research Network Connections program. The link to São Paulo is also supported by Academic Network of São Paulo.
Learn more at the WHREN-LILA Web site.
—Katie Yurkewicz
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