One of the peculiarities that cause Internet to be flexible is its decentralized structure. While other technologies can be controlled by a company or country, the Internet is able to adapt to obstacles and find new ways to develop. However, the Internet’s flexibility follows hierarchy principles. Just as with the telephone networks, where the users’ calls arrive at a desk and are then taken to a central, the computer networks have the concept of backbone, a pathway that concentrates the traffic of local networks and takes it to the superior hierarchy networks.

That is, your computer is part of a local network, which is connected to the provider’s network, which, for its turn, is interconnected with metropolitan networks and a nation-wide network. A network of the backbone kind is the one that concentrates the traffic of lower levels and transports it to higher levels, so that the information arrives at the final destination.

Given that the first network designs were linear and connected to a kind of spine, this infrastructure became known as a backbone. As the network engineering evolved, other topologies were created, shaped like rings or stars, for example, but the reference to human anatomy remained the same.

In Brazil, the first national backbone was born in the academic environment, in order to serve research institutes and universities. It was launched in 1992, by a project of the Ministry of Science and technology at the time, and it connected ten State capitals and the Federal District. With a capacity, at the time, of 64 kilobits per second, it was the first Internet network in the country with interstate links and international scope.

This project gave rise to the social organization Brazilian National Research and Educational Network, which operates the academic network, called Ipê, a nation-wide backbone that serves over 1.2 thousand campuses and units throughout the country. It has a high-performance capacity, of up to 10 gigabits per second, for it is a network that serves several research centers that need to transport large volumes of data. It is the experimental physics, astronomy, biodiversity, telemedicine, grid computing and many others that need to overcome the big data challenges to insert the Brazilian scientific production in a global collaboration environment.

In 2017, due to the greater demand for data transfers, RNP’s academic backbone shall have its capacity increased tenfold. Two new international connections will contribute to this growth, one to the United States and the other to Europe, both with connections of 100 gigabits per second. The improved capacity shall make it easier to exchange large volumes of data, as well as the collaboration between Brazilian and foreign researchers.