Specific objective 5: To raise awareness among users of the possibilities opened by the deployment of this new facility, by exploiting synergies between key user groups, disseminating interesting use cases and favouring the exchange of information among users of the whole region and between them and their European and worldwide counterparts.

Work Package: 5. End User Awareness

Output: A Latin American user community aware of the possibilities of the new infrastructure and a set of mechanisms for constant interaction between the NRENs, RedCLARA and the user communities ensuring the permanent flow of information in all directions.

Output description:

The new optical network will open new opportunities for the NRENs connected to RedCLARA such as access to the Commodity Internet for their communities and additional institutional users such as Government, NGOs and other social benefit organisations. On the other hand scientific and educational users will see their connectivity greatly enhanced, making viable possibilities that are now out of their financial scope, such as real-time observation at the astronomical observatories or partnering in the ATLAS experiment at Tier-1 level.

In order to make all these new possibilities known to end institutions, the primary dissemination channels will be those of the NRENs. Moreover, regional events such as TICAL held yearly by RedCLARA and bringing together the CIOs of LA universities and other organisations will be key to exchanging experiences and knowledge about new possibilities while opening at the same time training opportunities for their technicians.

Scientists and educators, however, do not have a regional event to exchange use cases, share applications and have access to specialised training on the use of the network, in particular the new possibilities opened by this new network. We will organise a meeting specifically tailored for these communities, intended to be held on an annual basis, where users and technicians will come together and interact, exchange ideas, applications and good practices.

This new event will be complemented by the dissemination of good practices, training videos and other material for end users in the Colaboratorio Collaboration Portal developed under the ELCIRA and MAGIC projects (http://colaboratorio.redclara.net).

Specific objective 4: To ensure the sustainability of the optical infrastructure by creating a new financial model for RedCLARA that takes into consideration new regional possibilities and the lower costs offered by direct transatlantic access to research and education networks around the world, as well as to the commodity Internet.

Work Package: 4. Sustainability

Output: A new funding model for RedCLARA enabling long-term sustainability of the LA network

Output description:

The RedCLARA Funding Model was created using as a basis the GÉANT cost-sharing model at that time. The RedCLARA mechanism takes into account:
a)Commonly based activities, such as Management, Project promotion and dissemination;
b)Backbone and intercontinental costs; and
c)Access costs.

While a) is equally shared among partners, the other 2 have in common the basic assumption that bandwidth is scarce and hence the cost sharing algorithm is based on assigning costs to the scarce resources, plus a “solidarity” redistribution factor making it possible to subsidise access for less favoured countries.

When the new backbone comes into place and the capacity on a direct submarine cable to Europe is implemented, the assumptions of this model will be completely changed: the amount of available bandwidth will be potentially as large as needed (and its upgrade costs will be relatively marginal), while access costs will be hard to measure because the backbone will actually cross most countries. The exceptions of Uruguay and Venezuela will be overcome in the near future as they will develop their internal networks and will connect to the border access points that BELLA-T will leave ready for them: Cucuta for Venezuela and Santana do Livramento for Uruguay.

This new reality will call for the adoption of a new RedCLARA Funding Model to cover the Management, Operations and Upgrading of the network as well as the addition of new capacity on the submarine part and other costs. This new model will be developed jointly with all RedCLARA Partner NRENs and will seek to incentivise the use of the network and ensure that countries experiencing economical restrictions for their NREN be anyway able to afford first-class connectivity.

Specific objective 3: To form the human capital required to deploy, maintain and operate optical networks, by sharing expertise, training new personnel and strengthening the cooperation networks between the NRENs, which is key to the successful operation and exploitation of the proposed optical network.

Work Package: 3. Capacity-building

Output: A group of technicians well trained in optical technology and security, capable of designing, managing, operating, maintaining and upgrading optical networks

Output description:

The engineering and operations of the NRENs as well as the new RedCLARA optical backbone will require the development of new capacities among engineers and technicians in all the partner NRENs as well as the RedCLARA engineering team. The training will be made during face to face workshops and the materials and presentations will be recorded and made available on demand from the RedCLARA’s Portal as well as from the Project’s Website.
The training will include the following subjects:

• Optical Network Design
• Optical Network Management
• Layer 2 Networking
• Advanced IP Routing
• Network Security

The attendants will be network engineers from all RedCLARA Partner NRENs as well as interested engineers and technicians attending the TICAL6 Meetings organised yearly by RedCLARA. It is expected that at least 60 technicians and engineers will be trained.