Anniversary Web Book
Prof. Suguru Yamaguchi
Director of AI3 Project
Professor, Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Wonderful time I had in 1995 and 1996 was in multiple short trips to Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Cambodia to see many professionals to discuss the feasibility on launch of the project called AI3. Since I didn't have many chances to visit countries in AP region, the trips were some kind of "exploration" for me to find whom we can work together and rare opportunities to learn more on how vast the differences between countries are. During these trips, what I was so impressed was there surely were professionals locally working very seriously to build their network infrastructure for both their own R&D activities and young people for the next generations. They were seeking a new model of international project on "development" of infrastructure. A professional who agreed to the essential idea of AI3 project said, "Since this is a research project, we should be a partner to share the responsibility equally on the project operation." Also, HRD (Human Resource Development) turned to be a popular discussion agenda during the trips.
It is honorable for us to be involved in SOI Asia from the initial stage and now to serve as a secretariat both for SOI Asia and AI3 project.
From the establishment of the AI3 project in 1996, many people are involved to the "exploration" we made: finding people and learning more about this region. After spending exciting years, we can celebrate 10th anniversary of AI3 project and 5th anniversary of SOI Asia project. Currently we are running the quite interesting IPv6 satellite Internet with unidirectional link routing capabilities in order to maximize the benefit of communication satellite links. With this achievement, SOI Asia project can put their receiver without huge bandwidth consumption on their addition of earth stations for SOI Asia partners. Other wonderful achievements can be found easily in both AI3 and SOI Asia projects.
I have more dreams on the future of our projects. "Outreach" and "sustainability." Still in this region there are people who are willing to share the opportunities we made so far. It is quite natural for us to expand our activities. In order to achieve this expansion, we redesign our project to have more sustainability on their operation. Of course, we need to challenge more. We've known some about the communication infrastructure development in this Asia and Pacific region. But new technologies and methodologies are coming so that it is quite obvious for us to make changes and make differences.
Our exploration is still continuing.