Connectivity Providers Database

From: hope@huracan.cr (Theodore Hope) To: randy@psg.com (Randy Bush) CC: Janet.Murray@f23.n105.z1.fidonet.org Date: Sat, 17 Apr 93 22:35:48 CAM Back to the original point: the Fundacion Omar Dengo, a non-profit organization in Costa Rica working with computer laboratories in public elementary schools, might be interested in K12. I suggest you contact the following women at the F.O.D.: Clotilde Fonseca (clotilde@huracan.cr) Eleonora Badilla (eleonora@huracan.cr) The F.O.D. will be getting its Internet link in the next few months, and the kids in about 40+ schools around Costa Rica will have email through a Unix host at the F.O.D. -- Theodore Hope / Proyecto Huracan - Fundacion Nahual / San Jose, COSTA RICA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is the "official story". The "Proyecto Huracan" began in August 1990 with funding from the United Nations Development Programme's regional (Latin America & Caribbean) project for non-commercial data communications networks. Huracan was initially housed in the Secretaria General ("Secretariat General") of the Consejo Superior Universitario Centroamericano - CSUCA ("Higher Council of Central American Public Universities") in San Jose, Costa Rica. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, or ACDI in Spanish), and managed by the University of Ottawa in conjunction with CSUCA, paid for Huracan's telecommunication costs (X.25 and to the Internet, see below) from its inception until March of 1992. Huracan, a '386 with Interactive Unix, 8 MB RAM, 650 MB disk, etc., is an X.25 host on the Costa Rican PDN, Racsapac. Users connect to Huracan by calling the PADs of Racsapac and its sibling PDNs throughout the region (Mayapaq in Guatemala, Antelpac in El Salvador, Hondutel/Teledatos in Honduras, Nicapac in Nicaragua, and Racsapac in Costa Rica and Panama). Because of the terrestrial microwave links that span the Central American region, X.25 rates from any of the countries to Huracan are quite inexpensive (between US$ 0.03 and 0.05 cents per minute connect time, with no per-traffic charge in most cases). Huracan exchanges mail and news with the Internet (via uunet.uu.net) four times a day via dial-up calls (Telebit T2500), and is registered in the maps as "huracan.cr". Huracan's user interface was designed for non-computer experts, and is almost completely in Spanish. Users have access to email (a version of "elm" translated into Spanish), certain net newsgroups (a version of "nn" translated into Spanish), and a few experimental online databases of regional interest. Huracan currently serves approximately 350-400 users throughout the six countries; most of them are from academic, research, and non-governmental institutions, though there is no restriction as to who can join. Mail and news flow at approximately fifteen megabytes per month, with approximately 2:1 ratio of incoming to outgoing data. In January 1992, due to institutional problemas at CSUCA, Huracan was moved to the Fundacion Nahual, a non-profit, non-governmental institution based in Costa Rica which works in the areas of information and communication, primarily in the Central American context. The University of Costa Rica, which since October 1990 has had a 19.2 kbps leased line from one of its systems (UCRVM2) to Bitnet, has recently converted the line to an Internet (IP) link. Before the end of 1993, Huracan as well as other institutions in Costa Rica will share the link, benefitting all the users in the region that currently use Huracan, and reducing extra-regional communications costs.