As a result of an agreement that enables interaction and collaborative work through voice calls over the Internet, academics and researchers from more than 127 institutions from both countries have now the possibility to communicate effectively and at low cost. This is one of the first results obtained after the First TICAL Conference.

In the context of the First Conference of Directors of Information and Communication Technologies of Higher Education Institutions, TICAL 2011, and as a result of the presentations made by Mariano Martin of the University Interconnection Network from Agentina (Red de Interconexión Universitaria, RIU), who described the experience of deploying a VoIP network in public universities and Antonio Fernandez Nunes, from the Brazilian academic network, who referred to the different services currently provided by RNP, aroused the initiative to integrate the networks of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) from both countries.

After the necessary adjustments made by the technical team, on July 4th was achieved the integration of the projects fone@RNP from Brazil and VoIP network of RIU from Argentina through a peering agreement which allows the establishment of voice call on IP between the academic and research communities of the two nations.

"Today we are working along with the National Network of Argentina, Innova|Red, to increase the number of institutions connected by incorporating research centers and other agencies. Currently the network is fully operational in 27 institutions in Argentina and over 100 in Brazil, "says Martin.

According to Martin, Coordinator of the Voice over IP Work Group from the Association of University Interconnection Networks (ARIU), the objective of this project, developed with the support of Paulo Aguiar, Andre Forigato and Alex Galhano Robertson from RNP and Fernando Aversa from Innova|Red, is to become the first step for a future regional integration through RedCLARA.

RIU VoIP Project
The University Interconnection Network Project from Argentina aims to simplify and improve communications between the different members of the national academic community through a routing service for calls based on prefix predefined by each institution. The Work Group on Voice over IP has two coordinators: Mariano Martin and Fernando Aversa belonging to the Villa Maria and San Luis universities respectively.
For more information see: http://vt4.riu.edu.ar/ / http://noticias.riu.edu.ar/

fone@rnp Project
Service that allows the establishment of calls between clients institutions of the Voice over IP network of RNP, facilitating communication via regular phone, IP phone or Internet software. This reduces the cost of long distance communications and enables the final user to use conventional telephony maintaining the characteristic of mobility of the Internet services.
For more information see: http://www.rnp.br/voip/.

What is ARIU?
Association of University Interconnection Networks is a joint venture of national universities and university institutions members of the National Interuniversity Council, CIN, Argentina, in order to carry out the network management to facilitate informative communication at the national and the international level in the national universities, promoting computing, technological and educational research and cultural development in the area of information and communications technologies.
For more information see: http://www.riu.edu.ar/

What is RNP?
Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (RNP) is the advanced network for communication and collaboration in teaching and research in Brazil. It connects more than 600 Brazilian institutions with each other and with foreign partners, making possible the interaction between people and resources through advanced applications. In addition to interconnect all the federal institutions of higher education and research, this infrastructure, called Ipê network, leads a laboratory for developing new applications and network services for the benefit of its users.
For more information see: http://www.rnp.br/