EllaLink operational – The BELLA Programme delivers
TICAL2021, Latin America – The opening ceremony of the 11th TICAL Conference (and of the 5th Latin American e-Science Meeting), that took place online this week, saw the inauguration of the first 100Gbps link for R&E resulting from the BELLA programme.
BELLA (Building the Europe Link with Latin America) is intended to meet the long-term interconnectivity needs of the European and Latin American research and education communities. An IRU for spectrum on the brand new EllaLink submarine cable system between Sines, Portugal and Fortaleza, Brazil has made this possible. The connectivity inaugurated this week consists of a direct 100 Gbit/s connection between a GÉANT router in Portugal and a RedCLARA router in Brazil, implemented over the EllaLink submarine cable system, on part of the spectrum delivered by the BELLA programme.
This new R&E connectivity enabled by the BELLA Programme is a big improvement for the collaboration between the European and Latin American Science, Research and Education Communities. With this direct interconnect between the European and the Latin American Regional Research & Education Networks, at the 100Gbps capacity expected by data-driven research, R&E traffic between the continents will see increased bandwidth and lower latency, as traffic no longer needs to take the longer path through North America.
BELLA has been implemented by a Consortium of Regional and National Research and Education Networks from Europe and Latin America. Funding for BELLA is provided by the European Union via three EC Directorates General (DG CONNECT, DG INTPA and DG DEFIS) and by the Latin America NREN community.
