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Venezuela Research Network connects to AMPATH

7-July 2003

MIAMI - – The Americas Path (AMPATH) project announces the connection of the Venezuelan National Center for Information Technologies (CNTI) as per the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between CNTI and Florida International University. CNTI is currently connected to AMPATH through a 45 Mbps fiber optic private line provided by Global Crossing and is peering with the highly regarded Abilene research network. Services going through AMPATH to CNTI include unicast and multicast peering, as well as engineering support, and NOC services. More information about CNTI can be found at http://www.cnti.gov.ve. 

CNTI, which functions under the Ministry of Science and Technology, supports Venezuelan science and technology development, teaching, and research in both academic and research centers. It was created in March 2000, with the additional goals of facilitating interconnectivity to further the exchange of information at both national and international levels, and developing implementation strategies and laws governing new technologies. Researchers and students in Venezuela will benefit from the advanced speed and connection to U.S.-based universities and research centers. 

Jorge Berrizbeitia, President of CNTI, is excited about the possibilities for collaboration. “This project promotes technology transfer between academics, scientists and technological research from Venezuela and the rest of the world”. 

AMPATH, now supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation, began as a collaborative project between FIU and Global Crossing. Using Global Crossing's terrestrial and submarine optical-fiber network, AMPATH will interconnect the Research and Education (R&E) networks in South and Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico to US and non-US R&E networks via UCAID's Abilene network. Participants will also be able to utilize the StarLight/STARTAP peering points led by the University of Illinois at Chicago, with grant support from the National Science Foundation. 

The AMPATH PoP currently consists of a GSR 12012 router donated by Cisco Systems, a CBX-500 ATM switch donated by Lucent Technologies, and a Juniper Networks M10 router. The Global NOC at Indiana University provides network monitoring and back-up engineering services in coordination with FIU's network engineering staff. 

About FIU: FIU, Miami's public research university, educates 33,000 students on campuses throughout South Florida and Latin America. It is the only public urban university in Florida with both a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and the Carnegie Foundation's top rating for research universities. Over the past three years, its sponsored research program has been the fastest growing of any research university in the state. FIU delivers high-quality education and training, conducts and promotes research to enhance Florida's role as a leader in telecommunications and information technology, offers training necessary to fostering business development and workforce preparedness and promotes technology transfer to enhance enabling technologies for the telecommunications and information technology industries. More information about FIU can be found at www.fiu.edu and www.ampath.fiu.edu. 

About Global Crossing: Global Crossing provides telecommunications solutions over the world's first integrated global IP-based network, which reaches 27 countries and more than 200 major cities around the globe. Global Crossing serves many of the world's largest corporations, providing a full range of managed data and voice products and services. Please visit www.globalcrossing.com for more information about Global Crossing. 

About StarLight: StarLight(sm), the optical STARTAP(sm) initiative, is an advanced optical infrastructure and proving ground for network services optimized for high-performance applications. Operational since summer 2001, StarLight is a 1GigE and 10GigE switch/router facility for high-performance access to participating networks and will ultimately become a true optical switching facility for wavelengths. StarLight is being developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, in partnership with Canada's CANARIE and Holland's SURFnet. STARTAP and StarLight are made possible by major funding from the US National Science Foundation to the University of Illinois at Chicago. STARTAP and StarLight are service marks of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. See http://www.startap.net/starlight. 

About Abilene: Abilene developed in partnership with Qwest Communications, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and Indiana University, is an Internet2 backbone network providing nationwide high-performance networking capabilities for over 200 Internet2 universities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. For more information on Abilene please see http://www.internet2.edu/abilene

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