In March, the Ipê network delivered a new capacity for the Federal Institute of Alagoas (Instituto Federal de Alagoas - Ifal), more specifically to the city of Santana do Ipanema, in the countryside of Alagoas, located 220 kilometers from Maceió. Now Ifal and the State University of Alagoas (Universidade Estadual de Alagoas - Uneal) have access to 40 Mbps internet access, instead of the previous 2 Mbps. Another link with the same capacity was installed at the Federal University (Universidade Federal de Alagoas - Ufal). The connectivity occurs by optical fiber, reinforced by radio.

For the campus director of Santana do Ipanema, professor Lenivaldo Melo, the improvement was significant. “We now have a greater connection, greater speed and the previous link will be used for emergencies", he says.

As for Ifal’s Information Technology director, Fernando Carneiro, the development opens new perspectives for students, "specially in research", he says. In addition to overcoming previous difficulties with simpler uses, such as opening e-mails, students will have access to all RNP’s advanced services and a high-capacity network infrastructure, which enables experimentation and raises these institutions in terms of teaching and research at the same level of peers around the world.

"In addition to these benefits, joining the RNP ecosystem enables students, professors and researchers to rely on strategic partnerships to use these services on their own projects, helping to create and evolve a set of safe, efficient and inexpensive solutions, as they are a result of a shared vision for the well being of education and research", said RNP’s general director of RNP, Nelson Simões.

With specific regard to the Federal Institutes (Ifs), until December 2014, 415 campuses were connected between 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps, while 139 still had links under implementation.

RNP aims to connect all campuses and units linked to the Federal Technological Education Network with high quality and performance. This goal is annually agreed with the Ministry of Education (MEC) and includes the new units derived from the Higher Education and Technological and Professional Training Expansion Plan and upgrading the infrastructure in operation.

RNP and IFs

Since 2002, when MEC joined the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) in order to create the RNP Interministerial Program (PI-RNP), the organization has intensified its participation in meetings and discussions of the Information and Communication Technology Managers Forum (Fórum de Gestores de Tecnologia da Informação e da Comunicação - Forti). The first circuits hired by RNP served the then Federal Centers for Technological Education (Centros Federais de Educação Tecnológica - Cefets).

Since 2006, the organization consolidated its contact with technological centers through visits and meetings with the IT campuses managers. Consequently, in the same year, 36 federal agrotechnical schools were connected, and in 2009, about 50 decentralized teaching units. However, until then, the infrastructure for high-speed connections was scarce, if any.

Only from 2010 on was it possible for RNP to overcome these barriers with the help of public and private companies, state partners, and in some cases, their own investment projects.

Benefits

In addition to connectivity to campuses, RNP runs the Annual Training Plan (Plano Annual de Capacitação - PAC), which aims to promote training of federal educational institution staff in Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

The plan empowers TIC technicians of Federal Education Institutions linked to the Higher Education Department (SESu) and the Secretariat of Vocational and Technological Education (Setec), linked to MEC, to assume implementation, maintenance and support activities of these networks and these information systems.

Being connected to the academic backbone also opens up a world of possibilities for the IFs, such as:

• fone@RNP - enables the reduction of telephone costs around 30% in the phone bill of the participating websites, in addition to providing local solutions for more critical telephony needs, such as the availability of PBX-IP modules (IFPB's case) and the analog gateway (Corrente Campus of IFPI);

• Federated Academic Community (Comunidade Acadêmica Federada - CAFe) - enables the use of the Capes’ Journal Portal, FileSender@RNP, Videoaula@RNP, Video@RNP, by researchers, professors and students, using the same access credentials of their home institution (single sign-on);

• eduroam - extends Wi-Fi access to more than 1,100 points in Brazil and over 13 million in other countries;

• Video@RNP and Videoaula@RNP - allows the use of different content and lessons recorded by IFs in classroom and distance courses;

• Public Key Infrastructure for Research and Education (ICPEdu) mode Corporate AC SSL - solves issues of digital certificates recognized by the various browsers.