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- 011.36 Venezuela
-
- By Pablo Liendo
- Regional Corresponsal REDALC Project
- PLIENDO@DINO.CONICIT.VE
-
- THE SAICYT OF VENEZUELA
-
- In the early 1980s, the CONICIT (National Council for
- Technological and Scientific Research), began work on a national
- network, known as the SAICYT (Automated Technological and
- Scientific Information System). Due to the lack of public X.25
- facilities, it was agreed that CONICIT would establish their own
- private network for the research community.
-
- Initially the infrastructure was based on three X.25 GTE-Telenet
- TP4000 nodes located in big cities. Other cities accessed the
- system through GTE-Telenet TP3010 PADs. The connections were
- based on dedicated lines running at 14.4 kbps. Each node had 16
- synchronous and 16 asynchronous ports while each PAD had 8
- asynchronous ports. In 1990, a process of upgrading the system
- began with PADs being replaced by Cisco MGS routers.
-
- The number of users on the network is around 2,000, but only 150
- are active users. Most of the use is email, although some people
- use the network to access their accounts in other countries to
- reach commercial services such as Dialog or CompuServe.
-
- Since 1990, a second network has been established. This
- network, the REACCIUN (Cooperative Academic Network among
- Research Centers and National Universities) is based on a TCP/IP
- backbone with some X.25 gateways. The main node is a Sun 4/490
- which acts as a centralized mail system at CONICIT headquarters.
- Free mailboxes are assigned to each researcher registered by
- CONICIT. Dedicated links to 6 national large universities and 8
- mid-size research and academic institutions are planned.
-
- Recently, a 19.2 kbps Internet link was established to the John
- Von Neuman Center Network (New Jersey, USA), and the top-level
- .VE domain was registered for the country. Although the link is
- currently limited to FTP and Telnet sessions, when the link is
- upgraded to 64 kbps, users will be able to take advantage of the
- full range of TCP/IP services.
-