Our link to Internet goes via the University of Granada and the CICA (Centro Informatico Cientifico de Andalucia) in Sevilla. Last year we replaced the leased analog line by an ISDN line at 64 KBit/sec. Taking the high communication costs into consideration, we bought our own radio link equipment (Wavepoint from AT&T), which has now been operational since the end of June and runs at 2 MBits/sec. Not only have we achieved an increase in speed of a factor of 32, but also a link without operation cost. The investment in this type of short range radio link will amortize within six months. We used satellite TV dishes that we installed ourselves; I want to thank my colleagues S. Navarro and G. Galvez for their help.
With the new link to the University of Granada, our entry to Internet is at 2 MBit/sec; however bottlenecks certainly exist for communication with other countries. The Spanish research network now has a 22 MBit/sec link to Amsterdam, but the data packets to IRAM Grenoble have to travel through more than 20 routers.