011.36 Venezuela By Pablo Liendo Regional Corresponsal REDALC Project PLIENDO@DINO.CONICIT.VE THE SAICYT OF VENEZUELA In the early 1980s, the CONICIT (National Council for Technological and Scientific Research), began work on a national network, known as the SAICYT (Automated Technological and Scientific Information System). Due to the lack of public X.25 facilities, it was agreed that CONICIT would establish their own private network for the research community. Initially the infrastructure was based on three X.25 GTE-Telenet TP4000 nodes located in big cities. Other cities accessed the system through GTE-Telenet TP3010 PADs. The connections were based on dedicated lines running at 14.4 kbps. Each node had 16 synchronous and 16 asynchronous ports while each PAD had 8 asynchronous ports. In 1990, a process of upgrading the system began with PADs being replaced by Cisco MGS routers. The number of users on the network is around 2,000, but only 150 are active users. Most of the use is email, although some people use the network to access their accounts in other countries to reach commercial services such as Dialog or CompuServe. Since 1990, a second network has been established. This network, the REACCIUN (Cooperative Academic Network among Research Centers and National Universities) is based on a TCP/IP backbone with some X.25 gateways. The main node is a Sun 4/490 which acts as a centralized mail system at CONICIT headquarters. Free mailboxes are assigned to each researcher registered by CONICIT. Dedicated links to 6 national large universities and 8 mid-size research and academic institutions are planned. Recently, a 19.2 kbps Internet link was established to the John Von Neuman Center Network (New Jersey, USA), and the top-level .VE domain was registered for the country. Although the link is currently limited to FTP and Telnet sessions, when the link is upgraded to 64 kbps, users will be able to take advantage of the full range of TCP/IP services.