The Latin America Network Conference, or LANC, was created in 2001 to be a forum for discussing research on networking and data communications, with more focus on problems and developments of interest to Latin America and the Caribbean. There were tutorials and technical sessions, and papers were made available in ACM Digital Library. LANC rotated among different countries in Latin America, from Costa Rica to Brazil, and was held generally once every two years, until 2018. See the full list of LANC editions below.
LANC was sponsored by SIGCOMM in 2001 and 2003, and after that, organized in cooperation. From 2019, SIGCOMM shifted its support to LANCOMM, the Latin American Student Workshop on Data Communication Networks. Instead of "simply another conference", LANCOMM is a student workshop, with different goals, and is formatted accordingly. It aims at helping students at earlier stages of their development, helping to consolidate a vibrant network and communications research community.
LANCOMM has a mentoring nature. It provides a platform for students to present their ongoing work, receive constructive feedback, guidance, tips, and learn about cutting-edge research problems being tackled by the computer networks community. It also exposes students to more experienced and acknowledged researchers, who can help identify new promising directions. Topics of interest include but are not limited to challenges linked to the development of data communication networks in Latin America.
SIGCOMM has contributed substantially with travel grants to help the participation of students and young faculty from Latin America who would not otherwise be able to attend. It also supports the presence of a few senior members of the SIGCOMM community.