The European Research and Education Networks - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 150

of a set of virtual network and computing resources
(Campanella, 2008). Each virtual network is a
“slice” of the infrastructure and many slides can be
active in parallel. The virtual networks will permit
disruptive experiments in new Internet architec-
tures and protocols to be conducted over existing
networks, without affecting the production use of
the underlying networks by other non-disruptive
network applications. On a more holistic level,
the FEDERICA project is dedicated to the future
Internet research (Campanella, 2008).
The target users of the FEDERICA infrastruc-
ture are the researchers who use networks not just
as the “tool” but primarily as the “subject' of their
work, and thus it is expected that those utilising
the FEDERICA infrastructure will include EC-
funded projects, telecommunication research
centres and manufacturers of network equipment.
In addition to supporting research conducted by
the aforementioned entities through provisioning
of virtual network slices, FEDERICA also aims
to provide solutions for monitoring, management
and control of parallel virtual networks.

nonexistent) or procurement of services in
order to upgrade the connectivity to the ob-
serving facilities.
• Fast data access by enabling a drastic im-
provement in the time needed for making
the data available from the moment of the
physical observation.
• Virtual presence by planning and imple-
menting the tools that could be used to
make possible the virtual presence of sci-
entists, engineers, and experts at remote
facilities and the possibility to perform
remote observations. The virtual presence
system is described next.

EVALSO aims to build a set of tools to imple-
ment a “virtual presence system” (VP system)
for the scientists and the experts. The VP system
will re-create the observatory environment at a
remote site in order to allow the needed expert to
interact with the local operators. Such a system
will optimize the results from actual observa-
tions, allowing the observer to interact with the
local staff. A survey of the already available GPL
software has been performed in order to choose
the tools and the software packages that satisfy
the requirements of the VP system architecture
(Cirami et al, 2008).

EVALSO: Providing Access to
Remote Astronomical Observatories

The Enabling Virtual Access to Latin-American
Southern Observatories (EVALSO) project aims
to create a physical infrastructure, and the tools
for its exploitation, to efficiently connect the
European Sothern Observatory (ESO) Paranal
and the Cerro Armazones Observatories in
Latin-America to Europe. EVALSO will use the
international networking infrastructures created
with the EC support - RedCLARA (RedCLARA,
2009) and GÉANT - to provide European research
a competitive edge by enabling faster access to
the collected data and use of facilities in an ever
more efficient way (EVALSO, 2009).
The main objectives of this project are:

Black Sea Interconnection:
Expanding the GÉANT network

Black Sea Interconnection (BSI, 2009) project is
funded by the EU's 7th Framework Programme
and spans from March 2008 to February 2010.
The BSI project intends to bridge the digital divide
that exists between the South Caucasus countries
and Europe by establishing a regional Research
and Education Network in the South Caucasus
(Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and connect-
ing it to GÉANT network. This would allow the
Caucasian research communities to participate
effectively in joint research and educational
activities with the rest of Europe, and this would

• Link upgrade through the creation of the
physical networking infrastructure (where