With the attendance of 80 participants from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, Dutch and French Antilles (Saint Maarten), Guatemala, Honduras and Panama, the Workshop on Network Access Points (IXPs -also know as NAPs), was opened today. The theoretical session of the event took place at the Hilton Princess Hotel, San Salvador, El Salvador, on July 18, while the practical session was held on July 19 at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA).
This Workshop was organized by the Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) together with the National Commission for the Information Society of El Salvador, Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), the Domain Name Registry at El Salvador (SVNet) and CISCO Systems, with the support of Packet Clearing House (PCH), the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The first part of the Workshop was conducted by Michael de Leo (Cisco Systems), Germán Valdéz (LACNIC), Sigfredo Figueroa (Executive Director ePais El Salvador), Rafael Ibarra (President SVNet); Fernando Arguello (General Electricity and Telecommunications Superintendent of El Salvador) was in charge of the opening ceremony.
Fernando Arguello, who welcomed the participants in the name of the Government of El Salvador, mentioned that having a traffic exchange point in El Salvador is a project greatly desired and of national interest which not only complies with the national strategy of reducing the digital divide but also with the Salvadorian commitment to Plan Puebla Panama and the World Summit on the Information Society.
Germán Valdez, LACNIC’s Policies and External Relations Manager, highlighted his organization’s commitment to the consolidation of regional infrastructure and the creation of activities and projects that will benefit the Internet community through alliances, as in this case, involving the private sector (CISCO) and the government sector (Government of El Salvador), while at the same time contributing to the regional goals established in the Regional Action Plan on the Information Society for Latin America and the Caribbean, eLAC2007.
The workshop was conducted by consultants and professionals having broad experience, both at global as well as regional level, in the installation, configuration, operation models and maintenance of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), also known as NAPs, and its objective was to provide information and criteria necessary for establishing and operating an IXP in those countries where there is none. This event was aimed at government officials involved in the issue, telecommunications operators, professionals within the fields of information technologies and telecommunications, and others interested in the development of Information and Communications Technologies.
The workshop offered simultaneous Spanish-English interpretation.
For more information on the Workshop and the presentations that were made, please go to: http://lacnic.net/en/eventos/tallerixp/
