| Project of the Month - January 2009

Black Sea Interconnection

Black Sea Interconnection (BSI) aims at building an international network infrastructure among research and education networks in the South Caucasus region and connecting it to the pan-European research network. The network will interconnect Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and also provide the connectivity for these countries to GÉANT2. The BSI project intends to introduce new technologies and services to the Information Society in those countries and be an important leap towards the integration of those countries scientific potential with the European Research Area.

Description of the project

Black Sea Interconnection (BSI) aims at building an international network infrastructure among research and education networks in the South Caucasus region and connecting it to the pan-European research network. The network will interconnect Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and also provide the connectivity for these countries to GÉANT2. The BSI project intends to introduce new technologies and services to the Information Society in those countries and be an important leap towards the integration of those countries scientific potential with the European Research Area.

Project impact:

• BSI will address the need for a regional backbone with considerable connections and the interconnection of the backbone with GÉANT2. Developing strategies for building regional network will increase the interaction of research communities and policy makers in the region, which will ensure the political support, and governmental funding in the region. International cooperation for e- infrastructures is the key impact of the strategies developed during the project.
• Strategy development studies will contribute to the designation of approaches for the provision of cross-disciplinary research services
• Realization of these strategies will encourage the coordination between National and pan-European e-Infrastructure initiatives with the improved connection capacities for the ICT community in the region. This action will ensure the improved use of current infrastructure and enhance the connection capacities among the NRENs in the region.
• Considerable connection capacities to GÉANT2 will direct the synergy in the region to the European scientific and research community. This will promote the international interoperation between South Caucasus NRENs and European NRENS connected to GÉANT2.
• The lack of sustainable infrastructure discourages the ICT projects in the region. The ICT or ICT dependent projects requiring high capacity and stable network connection (require big amount of data transfer, delay intolerant, loss intolerant) have never found chance to be proposed. BSI will supply the appropriate e-infrastructure.
• The opportunities for constituting international research bodies to prepare ICT and interdisciplinary projects with European colleagues increase by eliminating the e-infrastructure inadequacy. The BSI liaison activities will complement the e-infrastructure by paving a collaboration and communication infrastructure.
• BSI will help currently on going ICT projects to reach their goals by supplying a more sustainable e-infrastructure than they have expected. In addition, BSI will bring the objectives of the other ICT project one step further. 
• The implementation and use of network monitoring and management tools will help the current infrastructure to be efficient.
• The prepared Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) will bring a certain level of service assurance to the network services of the South Caucasus NRENs. In addition, putting a common and GÉANT interoperable AUP in practice will bring the regional network to European scale in the way the research infrastructures are implemented and operated.

Participating Countries

Turkey (coordinator), Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Greece, United Kingdom

FP and Project Number

Contract No. RI223571 - Project “ Black Sea Interconnection (BSI)”, FP7

Photos

BSI Meeting, Athens, September 18, 2023