EVALSO, a high-bandwidth communication infrastructure to efficiently connect the ESO Paranal and the Cerro Armazones Observatories to Europe: demonstration activities and start of operations

EVALSO (Enabling Virtual Access to Latin-American Southern Observatories) is an international consortium of nine astronomical organizations, and research network operators, part-funded under the European Commission FP7, to create and exploit high-speed bandwidth connections to the observatories of Cerro Paranal and Cerro Armazones in Chile. The communication infrastructure was delivered in November 2010 and this paper reports on the initial results of the project and the demonstrations of its capabilities, including the possibilities that the new infrastructure opens up in the geographically distributed operation of the observatories.