Cases & Voices
- María José López Pourailly
RedRUNBA, the Nicaraguan NREN, establishes connection to IPv6 and enables services from commercial providers through RedCLARA
The Universidad Nacional Agraria (National Agrarian University - UNA), a member of the Nicaraguan University Network of Broadband (RUNBA), of the National Council of Universities (CNU), started on February 12, 2021, the connection of its data network to the global network through the IPv6 protocol. Through this action, RUNBA gained direct access to Google, Microsoft and AWS services through RedCLARA.
The connection to the new version of the internet protocol (IPv6) was made possible thanks to the collaboration and interconnectivity with RedCLARA and the work of a team led by Benedicto García (Director of ICT at UNA) and the engineer Marlon Serrano (Responsible for Data Networks at the same university). Thus, the first IPv6 connection was established for academic use by the university community. In this way, public universities in Nicaragua begun a new phase, now connected to the global network through a protocol that guarantees efficiency, global connectivity and the long-term growth of the Internet.
The IP protocol facilitates data exchange between networks and establishes the numbering scheme and targeting resources necessary to connect devices to the global network.
We talked to Marlon Serrano, engineer who actively participated in the implementation, about the importance of these achievements.
When and why did you start working to establish the connection to IPv6?
The work began on January 27, together with RedCLARA and our local ISP. At that time, we started transporting our IPv6 traffic to the Internet and academic networks. The initiative came from RedRUNBA with the aim of motivating its members to implement the protocol, considering that it has been very difficult to assign IPv4 segments for commercial and/or academic uses in Nicaragua.
How important is this IPv6 connection to Nicaragua?
It is of high importance, as this is the first case of success to encourage more universities to implement these solutions.
How is this connection related to enabling Google, Microsoft and AWS services through RedCLARA?
We will now have a much faster connection to these services.
What is the importance of having access to these services through RedCLARA?
The importance lies in the efficiency of communication when compared to our local Internet services. For example: The Internet service offered by our local ISPs is slower, has many hops and is very slow to connect to the services we mentioned.
Get to know RUNBA: http://www.runba.edu.ni/
