Connectivity Providers Database

From: <cafonso@ibase.br> To: enzop@pnudreg.pe, jpasztor@igc.apc.org, randy@psg.com Date: Sun, 6 Sep 92 18:33:04 EST UNCED ISP/Rio UNCED Information Strategy Project in Rio: a final report by Carlos A. Afonso, IBASE / AlterNex Sept. 06, 1992 Introduction and acknowledgements --------------------------------- The UNCED Information Strategy Project in Rio (UNCED ISP/Rio) was proposed by IBASE (Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses, a Rio-based research and consultancy NGO which operates the AlterNex Node) at the end of 1990 to the UNCED General Secretariat and to NGOs' instances such as the Global NGO Forum and the Brazilian NGO Forum. The main objective was to make available at nearly free cost an internationally interconnected electronic information exchange system which would allow NGOs and other users to exchange messages between the official site of events (Riocentro) and the several sites of NGOs' events in Rio. ISP/Rio services included: international e-mail exchange; international electronic conferencing system; on-line access to UNCED-related database systems. Connected to the Internet through the Brazilian National Research Network (RNP), the ISP/Rio had as its focal point (main host and operations center) the AlterNex Node, the non-profit communications service in Rio affiliated with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). The Riocentro part of the project was incorporated into the Host Country Agreement between the government of Brazil and the UN. The Brazilian government took formal responsibility for providing data and telephone lines, as well as desks and electrical facilities, in a 135 m2 room within Riocentro, where the ISP/Rio facilities were installed. The project was carried out by a number of Brazilian and international organizations and individuals, and was technically implemented and operated on a voluntary basis by an international team from several hosts of the APC system. Information support was provided by a team from the NGONET project, who also helped in the development of the database system, Freenet and the on-site operations. This report covers the period from the project's inception to its completion during the conference in Rio. A historical summary is presented, followed by a description of actual project's operations during UNCED. The concluding chapter is an evaluation which closes with some recommendations. A technical appendix and a team list are also included. Besides thanking the AlterNex-APC-NGONET team (listed at the end of this document) for their extremely dedicated and competent work throughout UNCED, I want to express my deep appreciation to a number of people and organizations without whose active help this undertaking would not have been carried out. Special thanks go to Janos Pasztor, in charge of Information Systems at the UNCED Secretariat, who actively supported it. Maurice Strong had the courage to formally indicate me as voluntary coordinator of the project. Tadao Takahashi, head of the RNP project, the research councils of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (FAPERJ and FAPESP), as well as the people of the Rio Net university network, were fundamental in guaranteeing full operation of the Brazilian Internet in Rio and its international lines, against extremely difficult budgetary and technical odds. UNDP's support in the logistics for obtaining equipment on time was crucial, and I want to thank especially Dr Eduardo Gutierrez and Marcel Viergev for their efforts amidst many other very important tasks; in this logistics, the team of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) was also very cooperative and efficient. The entire implementation of the project within the Global NGO Forum area counted on the decisive support of Warren Lindner, whose help in obtaining equipment, facilitating phone lines and overcoming installation difficulties was crucial. The Global NGO Forum's technical team, headed by Amauri Duarte, deserves special mention for their reliable help day and night. Technicians of Rio's phone company, TELERJ, were extremely helpful and dedicated in planning, installation and maintenance of the many data and phone lines required by the system. Last but not least, I must stress major contributions of the government of Canada (Purple Martin Fund and the International Development Research Centre-- IDRC), the government of Holland, Sun Microsystems (I must mention the dedicated collaboration of Sun's Connie Brobeck), and Network Applications Technology (special thanks to NAT's Audrey Kuntz), all of whom provided financial or in-kind support for technical upgrade of the AlterNex facilities, without which the focal point of the whole system would not have been able to respond efficiently to this major challenge. I would appreciate to receive comments, criticisms and suggestions. Please send them to: Carlos A. Afonso Coordinator, UNCED ISP/Rio c/o IBASE Rua Vicente de Souza, 12 22251-070 Rio de Janeiro RJ BRAZIL fax +55-21-286-0541 Internet: cafonso@ax.ibase.br Historical summary ------------------ Since 1990, the APC network had been closely collaborating with the UNCED Secretariat to provide effective means of information dissemination and exchange, including APC's decisive participation in carrying out UNCED's Global Electronic Network (GEN). Through the GEN, NGOs and individuals, as well as government officials and researchers were able to receive and send messages and important documents related to the preparatory process leading to the June '92 conference. At the end of 1990, a first proposal to provide information exchange services at the sites of the conference was advanced by AlterNex to the Brazilian NGO Forum and to the UNCED Secretariat. The initiative resulted from AlterNex's concern that there would be heavy demand for information exchange which should be facilitated to consolidate the conference's innovative goal of full participation by NGOs worldwide. Also at the end of 1990, the General Secretary of UNCED, Maurice Strong, proposed the formation of a UNCED Working Party on Information Systems (UNCED/IWP). On May 6-7, 1991, the first meeting of the UNCED/IWP was held in Geneva, and a first technical proposal was presented by AlterNex to link the site of official events (Riocentro) to the several sites of NGOs' activities (whose precise location was not yet determined). During 1991, AlterNex worked extensively with the UNCED Secretariat and the emerging project of Brazil's National Research Network (RNP), in order to establish the most effective and least expensive means to provide actual local and international links for the project. Thus, the information exchange project, later called UNCED ISP/Rio, was refined to make sure a full-time link to the Internet could be provided through RNP and its Rio branch, the Rio Net system. On the other hand, AlterNex submitted to the governments of Holland and Canada a technical upgrade project of its installations. This was approved, and AlterNex received also a major equipment and software donation from Sun Microsystems to complete the upgrade. Although most equipment and software for the AlterNex upgrade was purchased or donated during 1991, it actually began to arrive in Brazil by March, 1992, less than 3 months before the conference. Some of the equipment were still arriving at Customs a few days after the starting date of UNCED. This was due to market availability problems, and lengthy bidding and purchase procedures to accomodate UNDP's rules (all equipment and software were imported through the UN). Several systems of the APC network participated in the organization of a voluntary technical team which, together with AlterNex staff, constituted the operational group which installed and operated the entire system at Riocentro and Global Forum sites. APC covered travel tickets' costs, and IBASE paid for hotel and food expenses. NGONET volunteers also participated in the operation, with special contribution in setting up the Freenet system (described below). Services provided and usage --------------------------- ISP/Rio made available to UNCED participantes four basic network access and service centers: + NGO Communications Center (NCC), at Hotel Gloria: 25 386 PCs in a Novell local area network (LAN), linked to AlterNex via a Netblazer dial-up router; one laser printer available for local word processing and printing of documents and messages. + ISP Center at Riocentro: 18 386 PCs in a Novell LAN, two Unix workstations and a Cisco 64 Kbps router, linked to AlterNex through the Rio Net backbone; two laser printers. + ISP Area at the International Press Center (IPC) of the Global Forum: 5 386 PCs linked to AlterNex via a Netblazer dial-up router. + AlterNex operations center: 5 terminals publicly available for direct connection to the network. Dedicated lines to AlterNex were also installed for the Global Forum office and the International Task Force / Brazilian Forum offices. Other sites originally planned, such as the international airport and the Flamengo Park area, could not be linked due to lack of space, personnel, data lines and/or equipment. Besides access from terminals in the above sites, users could access the network through eight error-corrected dial-up lines and two X.25 circuits (32 channels). Access from any terminal linked to the Internet was also possible, thus making the ISP/Rio available for access from any of more than 400,000 Internet computers. At the four ISP/Rio centers, users could self-register and use all services of the Freenet, including: + access to any Internet system worldwide (upon request); + e-mail exchange with practically all international non-commercial e-mail services, including Internet, Bitnet, APC network, Fidonet, and others; + access to a collection of UNCED-related databases available on the Internet, especially the full collection of official and NGO documents; databases provided by NGONET, such as a 12,000 entries' database of NGO addresses, were also available; + internal e-mail exchange within the several sites of UNCED; + participation in several international, continuing electronic conferences on UNCED-related themes; + word processing and laser printing of documents and messages. For a nominal fee, users could also: + send e-mail messages to any telefax or telex machine at much lower cost than through long distance calls; + exchange e-mail with most commercial e-mail services; + have full access to the APC conferencing system of more than 300 continuing international conferences on dozens of themes, UNCED-related or otherwise. At the NCC, NGOs' use was such that people frquently had to stand in a waiting line for the next available terminal. The NCC operated from 7 AM to 10 PM, and use was at full capacity (all PCs in use) for most of the time. At IPC, all five terminals were in use most of the time. At Riocentro, usage by NGOs was not as intense. This is partly due to the fact that most NGO activities were carried out at Global Forum sites. Journalists, some NGOs and several official delegations used Riocentro's ISP facilities for communications and word processing. The ISP center remained open from 8 AM to 8 PM for the full duration of the official conference. Counting individual users of the service during UNCED is not an easy task, since they could log into the system using a common account called "freenet" which did not require password. However, nearly 1,400 accounts were registered at AlterNex during the conference, and most terminals were in use at all centers most of the time. Through the network, dissemination of important documents such as the NGO treaties and Agenda 21 were crucial to extend participation to people who could not be in Rio. The APC team held a series of training workshops at Gloria Hotel during the events. An additional service provided by AlterNex was the distribution of a collection of disks containing all official UNCED documents available on the network. This service continues after the conference, since several official documents are still being uploaded by UNCED staff. Final remarks ------------- The ISP/Rio was a major challenge for people involved in its development and operation. For the first time, an NGO coordinated the implementation of a complex service at an international UN conference, in an effort to use available resources and integrate diverse systems and instances. Several technologies employed by the network were being used in Brazil for the first time, since the ISP operation coincided with the startup of the Rio and Sao Paulo backbones of the Brazilian Internet. Technical difficulties including smooth linking of diverse systems, dial-up routing and network control had to be overcome in a very short time frame. The NCC experience shows a way for the possible installation of similar centers linked to nearby Internet nodes, which would provide continuing information exchange and document production facilities to local communities, using the Internet as a common link. As a matter of fact, a proposal to use equipment from the Global Forum which is currently in the hands of UNDP to install such centers in some cities of Brazil, in the context of a Brazilian sustainable development network, has been suggested by the director of RNP and the coordinator of ISP/Rio to UNDP and Brazilian authorities. For APC, the project has been extremely significant, not only in terms of its extended presence in the UNCED events, but also to dominate techniques which can now be implemented in other similar events with much more expert background. From a technical point of view, the APC technical team now retains more high-level expertise to implement complex data communications services practically anywhere at relatively very low cost. For Brazil, it meant a renewed impulse to consolidate the Brazilian Internet and make it widely available to the academic and NGO communities, stimulating joint undertakings and pointing to new approaches to academic networking. Above all, we continue to receive positive reactions from the hundreds of users who benefitted from the system during the conference, many of whom got in touch with electronic information exchange for the first time at ISP sites during UNCED. ISP/Rio team ------------ The list includes institutional affiliation and citizenship. It is listed in the "more friendly" first name order, according to Brazilian custom: Alessandra Oliveira AlterNex Brazil Anatoly Voronov GlasNet Russia Andrew Garton Pegasus Australia Antonio Iyda Paganelli AlterNex Brazil Bill Leland IGC USA Brian Coan IGC USA Carlos Alberto Afonso AlterNex Brazil Christopher Teakle NGONET Australia Cristina Vasconi Nicarao Chile Edie Farwell APC Secretariat USA Ian Peter Pegasus Australia Ismael dos Santos AlterNex Brazil Kirk Roberts Web Canada Lisa Odabashian IGC USA Magela Sigillito NGONET Uruguay Marcia Langel AlterNex Brazil Marcos Vianna Villas AlterNex Brazil Miguel Peirano NGONET Uruguay Millard Clements APC volunteer USA Paul Wilson Pegasus Australia Ricardo Dias Campos AlterNex Brazil Saliel Figueira Filho AlterNex Brazil Steven Fram IGC USA Sue Tachna IGC USA