Internet Society Newspaper V1 N3 1992

REDID: Red Dominicana de Intercambio para el Desarrollo.
(Dominican Network for exchanges toward development).

By Daniel Pimienta, Union Latina ([email protected])

Dominican Republic shares, with Haiti, the second largest Caribbean island after Cuba. Having an estimated research network population inferior to 1000 persons, it is more known for its touristic than for its research activities. Yet, the birth of this small network may be of interest beyond its boundaries.

Why so? Because the REDID network gathers a comprehensive set of items which may give it some type of MODEL VALUE in other developing country.

The keywords of the model are:
-FOCUSING THE END-USER.
-FEDERATING BOTH THE HELPING AND THE PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS. -NEGOTIATING WITH TELECOMMUNICATIONS OPERATORS.
-GIVING PRIORITY TO USER APPLICATIONS.
-TRANSFERRING TECHNOLOGY .

. The creation process managed to make researchers from various institutions (Universities, Governmental Research Centers, NGO's and International Organizations) SHARE COMMON RESOURCES AND STRUCTURES.

. REDID is a USER GROUP formed as the result of an OPEN, TRANSPARENT AND PARTICIPATIVE process, directly conducted by the future end-users.

. REDID receives a FEDERATED support from VARIOUS INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, Union Latina (REDALC's Office), UNESCO (CRESALC), and UNDP (local Education dept.), using a methodological framework.

. REDID is making use of a HIGH LEVEL PC BASED INTERFACE designed to make the user handles network functions alike other PC applications (MULBRI software).

. REDID gets the MAXIMUM FREE SUPPORT EVER OBTAINED FROM NATIONAL PRIVATE TELECOMMUNICATIONS OPERATORS (free X25 access, logical partition in commercial e.mail system, link to neighbor country, BBS, local Data Bases access organization).

. REDID's traffic flows to the Internet thanks to an AGREEMENT WITH A REGIONAL NEIGHBOR network (Puerto Rico).

. REDID members received a USER DEDICATED TRAINING. The one week event gathered, in last July, a group of teachers who managed, together with REDID staff, to build the first regional articulated training effort oriented toward end-users.

. After the ongoing user installation, APPLICATIONS will be considered in priority. Many agreements are scheduled with others Caribbean Basin countries, Europe, USA, Canada and Japan and International Agencies. French commercial Data Base provider Telesystemes offers free Questel access for a renewable 6 months.

. The technical aspects were not considered with high priority, thanks to the agreement with the Telephone Company (CODETEL, a GTE subsidiary) which offers its data network infrastructure for 18 months. The design is of a centralized UUCP based mailing system with access via a national X25 network and 9600bps leased line to Puerto Rico.

The METHODOLOGY used to make REDID happen is a by-product of the REDALC study. It has been first used for the Peruvian network, and a paper presenting the details of the process ("Research Networks in Developing Countries: not exactly the same story!") is now available. Carbon or network copies of the 25 pages report can be requested to [email protected].