CENIC News

With the advent of the recent swine flu outbreak, a new concern has joined cost, quakes, and carbon to spur organizations to review and/or revise their business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Of course CENIC is no different, particularly since the advanced networking services we provide through the state are likely to play an important role in any such plans. In our case, our own internal Disaster Recovery plan was recently reviewed by the CENIC DC Technical Advisory Council (TAC) and generally found to be sound, but knowing the crucial role the CalREN is likely to play in the event of any event, we are keen to expand on and improve it. The current plan primarily deals with the CENIC Network Operations Center (NOC), which of course plays a vital role in supporting the network and the Associates 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.  The plan addresses continuing NOC operations in case our primary NOC facility becomes unavailable, permitting network operations to be carried out from another site containing servers with up-to-date copies of all information necessary to the network's operation.  In the context of NOC operations this plan is quite reasonable, but since CalREN itself plays a role in each Associate's own plan -- and given that the CENIC Associates serve nearly ten million Californians daily -- the scope of the CENIC business continuity and disaster recovery planning cannot stop at CENIC itself.

Also, each Associate's business continuity depends on CalREN in a myriad of ways, both direct (failover to remote data storage or diverse network paths, for example) and indirect. One CENIC Associate recently requested that all employees work from home because of an event taking place in the community.  The effect was to swamp the local ISP's connectivity to the CalREN backbone, causing unusually poor performance compared to what Associates would normally experience when accessing campus resources from home via CalREN.  This situation points out the interdependence of CENIC Associate business continuity and disaster recovery plans and CENIC's own such plan.   We have raised to our Board and Associates the interdependence of their plans with one another and ours and are looking to improve support during events when campuses, colleges, and schools feel the need to exercise their local plans.  Reconciling and optimizing CENIC's plan to support our own operations and those of our Associates is still a work in progress, but the swine flu outbreak reinforces the importance of continuing to address these and related issues.

CENIC is also engaged in discussions with California's Office of Emergency Services regarding the use of CalREN as a communications vehicle to schools, colleges, and universities in case of disaster.

We are of course hopeful the swine flu outbreak will not continue to worsen.  While we have a business continuity plan in place, the health alert presented by this flu outbreak and the many ways in which Associates can choose to respond to it highlight how CENIC, like many organizations, needs to continue to refine and improve our plans. We will continue to do so and to keep all of you informed.

In the August 2008 issue of CENIC Today, we announced the completion of a major optical upgrade for the Northern Route portion of the CalREN backbone, consisting of the Sunnyvale, Oakland, and Sacramento backbone nodes. The last of the previous optical equipment awaits removal from one backbone node site, but we're happy to announce that the Southern and Coastal Routes have joined the Northern Route and have been upgraded as well.

With the replacement of older transport platforms that had reached manufacturer's end-of-life with newer and more flexible such platforms, the number of channels possible between any two points along these network routes has increased dramatically. Previously, the number of channels possible between two network points was variable, in some cases as few as eight channels. Now, with the completion of the optical refresh along three major backbone routes stretching from Sacramento to San Diego along the California coast, 32 channels are possible between all network points along this route, with the potential for 64 channels in the future.

Planning and design is underway to upgrade the Central Valley Route backbone path through the center of the state from Sacramento to Riverside and passing through Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield. Keep an eye on future issues of CENIC Today for updates about the optical upgrade.

Patrick C. Perry, Vice Chancel­lor of Technology, Research and Information Systems at the California Community Col­leges System Office was recognized for Leadership in Management of Information Technology at the 2008 Best of California awards ceremony and gala held in Sacramento.

Perry is shown at right flanked by Cathilea Robinett, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Government and Center for Digital Education, and Maryann Alexandrian, Senior VP of Global Services and Channels, WYSE Technology.

The Best of California Awards is an annual program to honor IT professionals and projects in California state and local government and education organizations for their dedica­tion, hard work and contributions.

Sixteen of California's top technology projects and leaders from state and local governments were selected by the Center for Digital Government, a division of eRepublic, Inc. publishing company. The annual awards recognize superior contri­butions and distinction in the informa­tion technology arena.

"This year's winners showcase outstand­ing technological innovation and busi­ness efficiencies," said Robinett. "California public sector IT, both state and local programs, are tackling and solving transportation, health administration, food systems, emer­gency operations and sustainability issues. We congratulate them for their hard work and success!"

The winners are selected by a panel of judges based on a set of criteria, including collaboration between agencies, innovative use of technology and improvement of ser­vices to citizens or government employees.

Community College IT professionals from all over the state came together from April 26-29, 2009 at the Granlibakken Conference Center in Tahoe City for the 2009 Annual Conference for CISOA, the California Community College's Chief Information Systems Officers Association. The conference schedule and presentations can be found online. Keynote speakers included former 21st District State Senator and now Chancellor of the CCC system Jack Scott, Chancellor of the North Orange County Community College District Ned Doffoney, & President and CEO of Catalyze Learning International Mark Milliron.

CENIC Project Manager Ed Smith co-presented a breakout session together with Catherine McKenzie, Lead Specialist in Information Systems and Analysis at the California Community Colleges System Office (CCCCO) The session was entitled "Annual CENIC, CalREN, and TTIP Funding Update" and provided attendees with an update on network related activities in progress at CENIC, an update on the three CalREN networks, and a detailed update of the network related technology priorities and strategies the CCC System Office has for the colleges and their centers.  This presentation can be found online at the CENIC website.

Keep an eye out on future issues of CENIC Today for more good news about the 2009 CISOA Awards as well!

The SuperComputing 2009 conference is scheduled for November 14th through 20th at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon.

The Network for Education and Research in Oregon (NERO), the Oregon GigaPOP (OGIG), and its partners in Oregon are partnering with SCinet to provide WAN services support. In order to plan the WAN and metro resources required to support conference participants we are asking exhibitors and network entities to identify their WAN circuit requirements into the Oregon Convention Center.

The SCinet WAN Team will work with National LambdaRail (NLR), Internet2, and NERO to implement the required circuits for SC09 from the NLR and Internet2 connection point in Portland, Oregon to the Oregon Convention Center. The following WAN services are planned to be available: NLR PacketNet, NLR FrameNet, Internet2's IP Network, Internet2's Dynamic Circuit Network, ESnet, and commodity Internet.

If your organization will require additional WAN circuits (i.e. NLR WaveNet, Internet2 WaveCo, another provider, etc), please respond to wan-team@scinet.supercomp.org with the details of your particular requirements. Please provide us with the following information:

Circuit type and bandwidth:

(i.e. OC-48c/STM-16c, OC-192c/STM-64c, OC-768c/STM-256c, GigE, 10GigE-LAN, Fibre Channel (specify type), HDTV, etc.)

Carrier or provider:

(i.e. Level3, Qwest, NLR, Internet2, etc.)

Circuit origination point:

(i.e. Level3 POP in Seattle, MANLAN in New York, etc.)

Circuit termination point on the SC09 showfloor:

(i.e. SCinet Layer2 network, directly to exhibitor booth via dark fiber, etc.)

Even if you are unable to provide all the details above please contact the SCinet WAN Team as soon as possible. The deadline for submitting your organization's WAN circuit requirements is May 29, 2009. Unless otherwise expressly agreed to by the SCinet WAN Team, all WAN circuits will be terminated at the Oregon Convention Center.

The WAN team is planning to support the extension of WAN circuits from the following locations into the Oregon Convention Center:

• Level(3) Portland Gateway (Internet2, NLR)
  1335 Northrup
  Portland, Oregon
• Portland NAP, Pittock Block
  921 SW Washington Ave
  Portland, Oregon

Please send your circuit requirements, questions or concerns to the SCinet WAN Team at wan-team@scinet.supercomp.org.

Periodically, CENIC features researchers and educators throughout California that use CalREN in groundbreaking ways, demonstrating the crucial role that advanced networks play in the state's ability to meet the needs of research and education community.

We'd like to begin featuring these Star Performers in our monthly newsletter, and this month's featured CalREN user is Dennis Davino, Special Projects Director for Teacher Preparation, Educational Interpreter, and Paraprofessional Programs at Cypress College.

As one of the most multi-ethnic and multi-cultural states in the country, California's educational system has always faced unique linguistic challenges to meet the needs of its millions of students, but educational interpreting for deaf and hard-of-hearing students raises that challenge to even higher levels. Communication for deaf and hard-of-hearing students encompasses a variety of languages and systems including American Sign Language, Manually Coded English, Signing Exact English, and PSE.  They may also use language adjuncts such as manually cued speech and speechreading. Students may use conventional hearing aids, cochlear implants, or no assistive devices at all, and their families may use any of these methods at home or speak one or more of a multitude of languages.

Educational interpreters must therefore be familiar with all of these situations and methods of communication if they are to enable deaf and hard-of-hearing students to achieve as citizens of a 21st century society. Preparing these interpreters and other related professionals is Dennis Davino's own challenge, and it should be no surprise that CalREN Video Services plays an important part in the preparation of professionals who plan to serve a population so reliant on visual and visually supplemented methods of communication.

The Cypress College Educational Interpreter Training Program uses CalREN Video Services to offer a blend of classes in its program. The program serves students at the college as well as those at several broadcast sites throughout the state of California. Educational Interpreting is a specialized field that requires uniquely specialized training. Using CVS to complement the program creates a comprehensive pathway toward state certification for every potential candidate. With the high quality of the actual video broadcast, possible only with advanced networks like CalREN, students can use their sign language and interpreting skills with clarity and confidence.

Last month's Star Performer was Pierre Thiry, Principle Investigator of the Mid-Pacific ICT Center. The MPICT's mission is to coordinate, promote, and improve the quality of ICT education, with an emphasis on 2-year colleges, in a region consisting of Northern California, northern Nevada, southern Oregon, Hawaii, and the Pacific Territories.

To learn more about the other Star Performers that CENIC has featured, please visit our website at www.cenic.org.

"CCC" stands for California's Community College System, but it also stands for Cost, Carbon, and Convenience -- three things that CalREN Video Services helped the community colleges optimize by facilitating a merged ceremony at the 2009 Media Arts Award Competition for the first time in the competition's ten-year history.

Nearly 500 entries were submitted by students across the community college system and several of California's high schools in a variety of artistic categories, digital and otherwise. Category chairs and faculty screeners chose several finalists, and at the award ceremony on April 24, held simultaneously at Mission College and the North Orange County Community College District's School of Continuing Education, finalists and their faculty mentors assembled to find who had won the highest awards. Chaired and introduced by Multimedia & Entertainment Initiative Director John Avakian from Mission College, the ceremony began at 6pm after attendees had been given the opportunity to view all of the finalist entries at several computer stations. Program Manager of the Digital Media Program at the NOCCCD's School of Continuing Education Christie Campbell welcomed entrants, their faculty members, and other attendees together with Provost Christine Terry and Mission College's Dean of Workforce and Adult Education Christina Oborn, also participating from Mission College.

Sponsors of the competition included 2006 Innovations in Networking Award Winner ACME Animation, Adobe Systems, Apple, Autodesk Media and Entertainment, ComputerLand, Digidesign, and Lynda.com.

US & World Networking News:

On April 9, 2009, Indian President Pratibha Patil inaugurated the initial phase of the National Knowledge Network (NKN). On the occasion, Patil said Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has played an important role in the country's progress.

"The ICT has played a pivotal role in linking people, institutions and regions within the country and globally. It has increased the access of the ICT users to a wider pool of knowledge, which is now available online. This has definitely helped doctors, scientists, professionals, scholars and students," she said.

On April 27, 2009, the membership of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was announced by President Obama. The full membership of PCAST is shown at the above link.

PCAST is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who will advise the President and Vice President and formulate policy in the many areas where understanding of science, technology, and innovation is key to strengthening our economy and forming policy that works for the American people.

Included among the members is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the UC San Diego, Mario Molina. Dr. Molina is also part of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City and shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with UC Irvine's F. Sherwood Rowland for their work on the threat of CFCs to the ozone layer.

The first TelePresence session between national research and education networks was achieved on April 5, 2009 as a result of joint efforts of NLR and its counterpart in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ANKABUT.

Demonstrating tremendous new opportunities to bridge physical distances and enable researchers and educators from other sides of the globe to collaborate live, literally face to face, NLR and ANKABUT announced they successfully arranged for and managed a Cisco TelePresence connection between the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.

On April 28, 2009, Internet2 announced that Carol Willis, manager of the Texas Education Telecommunications Network (TETN) was honored with the inaugural Richard Rose Award.

The Richard Rose award was established to recognize extraordinary individual contributions that extend the reach of advanced networking into the K20 community. Carol is credited with initiating, planning and implementing the TETN “Plus” network project. Carol fostered a collaborative relationship with the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) to create a next-generation optical network specifically to support K20 education in Texas.

SC09, the 22nd annual event in the SC conference series, recognized globally as the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, announced on April 27, 2009 that it had selected former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to deliver the conference keynote address.

SC09 has adopted the theme of "Computing for a Changing World," and will present a special focus on initiatives related to Sustainability, Bio-Computing and the 3D Internet.

The Golden State has $3.1 billion in economic stimulus funds to spend on education. Now comes the tough part: how to make sure that the money helps students.

Every policy that California has needs to be thoroughly examined, state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said.

About CENIC and How to Change Your Subscription:

California's education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are engaged.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively and efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network as technology advances.

For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

Subscription Information: You can subscribe and unsubscribe to CENIC Today at http://lists.cenic.org/mailman/listinfo/cenic-today.