In order to further its mission to encourage innovation among California's researchers and educators, CENIC maintains significant relationships with a variety of other network providers and professional associations. These include Network Relationships that provide peering services and other opportunities for collaboration and network expansions, and Professional Associations whose missions include increasing the quality and availability of networks and networking services to those who need them, worldwide.

Network Relationships:

Pacific Wave:

Pacific Wave (www.pacificwave.net) is a state-of-the-art international peering exchange facility designed to serve research and education networks throughout the Pacific Rim and the world. A joint project between CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington, Pacific Wave creates a new peering paradigm by removing the geographical barriers of traditional peering facilities. It enables any US or international network to connect at any of three locations along the US Pacific coast, as well as offers the option to peer with any other Pacific Wave participant, regardless of physical location.

By presenting a seamless, unified, international peering exchange facility at strategic Pacific coast locations, the Pacific Wave peering facility will be a magnet for research and education partners throughout Canada, Mexico, South America and the Pacific Rim.

For more information, visit www.pacificwave.net.

National LambdaRail:

National LambdaRail is advancing the research, clinical, and educational goals of members and other institutions by establishing and maintaining a unique nationwide optical network infrastructure that is owned and controlled by the U.S. research community. NLR aims to support experimental and production networks, foster networking research, promote next-generation applications, and facilitate interconnectivity among high-performance research and education networks.

For more information, visit www.nlr.net.

Internet2:

CENIC provides its associates with 10 Gb/s Ethernet connections to Abilene, the national Internet2 backbone, in southern California and Seattle.

For more information, visit www.internet2.edu.

Corporación Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet (CUDI):

The Corporación Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet (CUDI) is a Mexican nonprofit corporation composed of members from the public and private sectors. CUDI funds an advanced, high-speed network in Mexico and has agreements with a number of carriers that provide high-performance applications to higher education and research institutions.

For more information, visit www.cudi.edu.mx.

Western Regional Network:

In 2010, Pacific Northwest GigaPoP, Front Range GigaPoP, the University of New Mexico, and CENIC announced the formation of the Western Regional Network, a multi-state partnership to ensure robust, advanced, high-speed networking availability for research, education, and related uses through the sharing of network services. These RONs provide networking services to the following states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, and Wyoming.

WRN will provide access to shared NLR, Internet2, PacificWave, and other regional fiber- and IP-based services for instruction, research, medical education and clinical care, and economic development purposes.

Professional Associations:

EDUCAUSE:

EDUCAUSE is the nation’s leading professional organization for information technology in higher education. CENIC is a member of the EDUCAUSE Net@EDU program, which formed the Broadband Pricing Group (BPG) with CENIC as an active participant.

For more information, visit www.educause.edu.

Association of Pacific Rim Universities:

The Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) was founded with the goal of stimulating cooperation throughout the fields of teaching and research on issues of importance to the Pacific Rim community.

For more information, visit www.apru.org.

Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation:

The Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF) is a public-private partnership whose goal is to obtain donations of unused communications and networking assets and international bandwidth to enable global collaboration in research and education.

For more information, visit www.ieeaf.org.