From: jmr8@ellis.uchicago.edu (Juan M. Rodriguez-Paris)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: HURACAN.CR info
Date: 27 Jul 92 01:15:36 GMT
Reply-To: jmr8@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: Department of Biology at the University of Chicago


 Message 49 (3924 chars)
Received: from relay1.UU.NET by midway.uchicago.edu Fri, 24 Jul 92 14:33:27 CDT
Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP 
	(5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA06491; Fri, 24 Jul 92 15:33:26 -0400
Received: from huracan.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL
	(queueing-rmail) id 153255.2372; Fri, 24 Jul 1992 15:32:55 EDT
Received: by huracan.cr (5.61/1.35-huracan)
	id AA25532; Fri, 24 Jul 92 13:18:05 -0600
From: hope@huracan.cr (Theodore Hope)
Message-Id: <9207241918.AA25532@huracan.cr>
Subject: Re: HURACAN.CR
To: jmr8@midway.uchicago.edu (juan m rodriguez-paris)
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 13:18:05 CAM
Organization: Proyecto Huracan - Fundacion Nahual / San Jose, Costa Rica
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL0 (Sp)]

> 	I would appreciate any general information about huracan.cr. 

-----

The "Proyecto Huracan" began in August 1990 with funding from the United
Nations Development Programme's regional (Latin America & Caribbean) project
for non-commercial data communications networks.  Huracan was housed in the
Secretaria General ("Secretariat General") of the Consejo Superior
Universitario Centroamericano - CSUCA ("Higher Council of Central American
Public Universities") in San Jose, Costa Rica.  A project financed by the
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, or ACDI in Spanish), and
managed by the University of Ottawa in conjunction with CSUCA, has paid for
all of Huracan's telecommunication costs (X.25 and to the Internet, see below)
since it began serving users in September 1990.

Huracan, a '386 with Interactive Unix, 8 MB RAM, 650 MB disk, etc., is an
X.25 host on the Costa Rican PDN, Racsapac.  Users connect to Huracan by
calling the PADs of Racsapac and its sibling PDNs throughout the region
(Mayapaq in Guatemala, Antelpac in El Salvador, Hondutel/Teledatos
in Honduras, Nicapac in Nicaragua, and Racsapac in Costa Rica and Panama).
Because of the terrestrial microwave links that span the Central American
region, X.25 rates from any of the countries to Huracan are quite inexpensive
(between US$ 0.03 and 0.05 cents per minute connect time, with no per-traffic
charge in most cases).    

Huracan communicates with the Internet (via uunet.uu.net) three times a day
via dial-up call (Telebit T2500), and is registered in the maps as
"huracan.cr".

Huracan's user interface was designed for non-computer experts, and
is completely in Spanish.  Users have access to email (a version
of "elm" translated into Spanish), certain net newsgroups (a version of "nn"
translated into Spanish), and a few experimental databases of regional
interest online.

Huracan currently serves approximately 350-400 users throughout the six
countries; most of them are from academic, research, and non-governmental
institutions, though there is no restriction as to who can join.  Most users
currently use the system free of charge, though there are plans to begin
charging users (or at the institutional level, in the case of universities)
in the second quarter of 1992.  Mail and news flow at approximately fifteen
megabytes per month, with approximately 3:1 ratio of incoming to outgoing data.

In January 1992, due to institutional problemas at CSUCA, Huracan was moved
to the Fundacion Nahual, a non-profit, non-governmental institution based in
Costa Rica which works in the areas of information and communication,
primarily in the Central American context.

The University of Costa Rica, which since October 1990 has had a 19.2kbps
line from one of its systems (UCRVM2) to Bitnet, plans to use the line for
an Internet link before the end of 1992.  When this happens, Huracan
as well as other systems in Costa Rica will share the link,
benefitting all the users in the region that currently use Huracan, and
reducing extra-regional communications costs.