Discover or remember the journey made by FCCN, the digital services of the Foundation for Science and Technology, in Portugal. A path made up of milestones focused on promoting technology for knowledge at national level.
On December 23, 1986, the Foundation for the Development of National Means of Scientific Calculation was born, which would eventually give rise to FCCN. The aim of the foundation was explained in an article released a few months later as being "to promote the installation and use of powerful means of calculation and to coordinate them with scientific and technical entities used, particularly in higher education".
As a first step, as early as 1988, FCCN included in its plan of activities the foundations for setting up the National Scientific Computing Network (RCCN) in Portugal, the predecessor of the current RCTS. This was also the year when the first supercomputer at the service of FCCN was created - the CONVEX C220.
The fall of 1991
One of the main steps would be taken five years later, in the fall of 1991. It was on this date that the "RCCN IP Service" project, developed by FCCN, achieved its main goal - connecting Portugal to the Internet. "This project originated in a proposal formulated by a group of researchers called Forum-IP," explains José Legatheaux Martins, who led this project, on a website he created about the history of the Internet in Portugal.
On this site, Legatheaux Martins shares various documents and technical details about Portugal's first steps online, also detailing the phase of "setting up Portugal's DNS domain - known as ".pt" - between 1991 and 1994.
Thus, during the early 1990s, FCCN enabled the main national basic and higher education institutions to have access to the Internet . However, the Internet was still unknown to the general public. To get around this reality, in 1994 the organization held a seminar at the National Civil Engineering Laboratory entitled "Portugal on the Internet", which was one of the first to publicize this technology in our country.
In 1995, GigaPix was created, a neutral, non-profit Portuguese traffic exchange point, with the aim of improving the quality of the interconnection of IP networks in Portugal. Then, in 1997, FCCN made it possible to start supplying the internet to all the country's schools, with RCTS providing this connection to 1,650 schools, from 5th to 12th grade .
The first decade of the new millennium
In the first decade of the new millennium, FCCN 's focus was on the switch to optical fiber, cybersecurity and the European integration of national connectivity.
In 2002, CERT.PT was created, with the mission of responding to security incidents. 2003 was the year that FCCN joined the European GÉANT network . In 2004, the b-on - Online Knowledge Librarythe Video Broadcasting and Optical Fiber was implemented at RCTS. The following year, the Eduroam and RCTS VoIP services were launched.
The most recent years of evolution
Over the years, more digital services have been created which now reach more than 600,000 students, researchers and teachers in the national education and research community on a daily basis .
Within the areas of Connectivity, Computing, Collaboration, Knowledge, Security and Innovation, there are already more than 20 digital services that FCT, through FCCN, brings to its community .
In this more recent period, we highlight the emergence of Arquivo.pt and the Portuguese Open Access Scientific Repository (RCAAP), in 2007 and 2008, respectively.
In 2009, the multimedia area was also strengthened, with the start of the desktop videoconferencing service (Colibri)the e-learning support service (educast) and the opening of the Studio.
In 2012, FCCN became part of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), as a public foundation under private law. Since then, other services have emerged, such as PTCRIS, CIÊNCIAVITAE e CIÊNCIAIDthe NAU or the National Advanced Computing Network.
The evolution is undeniable, and throughout its almost four decades of existence, FCCN has guided its activity by the same mission - to give the best to the national scientific community, providing dozens of services to thousands of users. Click here to find out more about the history of this organization: https://www.fccn.pt/quem-somos/historia/
