Advanced networks allow scientists, researchers, academics, professors and students to collaborate by sharing information and tools through a series of network interconnections. These networks represent an area that is different from commercial (or public) internet; an area that exists in a dedicated parallel space across the globe exclusively for research and education communities; this is what we call advanced networks. Latin America’s advanced network is RedCLARA, which interconnects the national academic networks from Latin American countries, and every continent and/or subcontinent in the globe has its own regional network. All these networks are in turn interconnected to each other.

By making use of advanced networks, academics and researchers can collaborate across different countries and continents, regardless of distances and borders.

Advanced networks serve two fundamental purposes:

• To support the work of researchers and academics through the provision of an large-capacity infrastructure for data communication, which enables the fast transfer of large amounts of data.
• To act as a powerful research tool, by providing a platform over which researchers and innovators can develop and test new network services and technologies.

Many of the advances in telecommunications and networks were developed thanks to advanced networks and many of the technologies that will be used in the future are currently being developed in them.