CENIC News

I have focused in my recent articles on federal networking issues, the ARRA stimulus funding opportunity and the FCC's Broadband Plan, due to be released later this month. This month I would like to focus on the national networking provided to us by the research and education (R&E) community, specifically that provided by Internet2 and National LambdaRail (NLR), two national non-profit organizations both of which focus on serving the research and education community.

CENIC utilizes services of both organizations and is active in both at membership and governance levels. I serve on one of the Internet2 councils, the External Relations Advisory Council and am active in the Internet2 Connectors group. I also serve on the NLR Board. Additionally, many CENIC staff and representatives of our member institutions serve in various capacities on committees and groups of these two national networking organizations. For example, CENIC Board Member, Pete Siegal of UC Davis, is a member of the Internet2 Board and Chair of the Internet2 Research Advisory Council.

Network traffic between any CENIC-connected member institution and any Internet2- or NLR-connected institutions travels over these national R&E networks to its destination. Among the advantages of using such national R&E networks is the ability to obtain a high level of network performance, with no congestion or delays. And, because the fee models of both organizations are not based on traffic volumes, traffic between CENIC members and the research and education sites in other states is a known predictable cost. Just as important as these advantages is the ability to obtain services not offered by telecommunications companies. For example, the ability to obtain dedicated Layer one, wave services has not always been an offering of telecommunications companies, but NLR offered these services since its inception. Similarly, Internet2 offered DCN, or dynamic circuit network services when they were not available from commercial telecommunications companies. Also, both organizations support Cisco TelePresence, a very advanced high-definition video teleconferencing system gaining in popularity, and TelePresence capability across their two networks.

Both NLR and Internet2 are beginning to look at their future network services and designs. Both are exploring 100 Gigabit services. Such services will likely be available from either or both networking organizations prior to their availability from telecommunications companies. And, both are interested in learning about the future needs of their members, the Regional Networks such as CENIC, and in turn the members we serve. CENIC obtains and solicits this information via our High-Performance Research (HPR) Network technical advisory council (TAC) and the Board of Directors Experimental and High-Performance Network committee. We, and representatives of our members, then represent these needs to the two national research and education networks. So, if there are high-end or advanced network services you would like to request support for, please let members of our HPR TAC or Board Committee know.

The two national networks provide important services to CENIC and CENIC's member institutions. I hope I've highlighted to those less familiar with our dependence on them just how valuable these two networking organization are.

California's Community Colleges have continued with their recent list of new connections during the month of February with new Gigabit connections to the CalREN backbone for Long Beach City College and Antelope Valley College, as well as a Gigabit connection for the Canyon Country Education Center, an offsite center for College of the Canyons.

California's K-12 System also received new Gigabit connections this month, as the Merced County Office of Education received a circuit to the Merced backbone node and the Ventura COE received a second Gigabit connection to the CalREN backbone.

Lastly, UCLA's connection to the CalREN backbone node at Riverside was upgraded from 1 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s as the campus's connection to the high-performance research tier of the CalREN network, CalREN-HPR.

At the CENIC Annual Conference taking place in Monterey next week, attendees will enjoy presentations on the projects that have won the 2010 Innovations in Networking Awards. Readers of CENIC Today can learn more about the award winners and other program highlights at the conference website, one of which is the Scalable, Energy-Efficient Datacenters (SEED) project, led by UC San Diego's Shaya Fainman. Other participants include George Papen and Amin Vahdat, also of UC San Diego, Caltech's Axel Scherer, Ming Wu of UC Berkeley, and Keren Bergman of Columbia University.

The SEED project is an extraordinary one, and of vital importance when datacenter power needs for processing and cooling are skyrocketing at the same time that datacenters themselves are proliferating. To study these needs and determine a way to use optical technologies to create a more energy-efficient datacenter, the Calit2-based team is developing the SEED instrument to create the technology base for an order-of-magnitude improvement in both the cost and energy per switched bit. "It can also act as a platform for training the next generation of network engineers who must be equally versed in optical and electrical networks," adds Fainman. "This CIAN research has important ramifications for everyone. After all, technologies that enable larger and more energy-efficient information processing in data centers will affect almost every aspect of life in the digital age."

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

The time is fast approaching for the CENIC Annual Conference, FULL SPEED AHEAD, starting next week at the Hyatt Monterey in Monterey, CA. Registration is open to this Friday March 5, 2010, but for those unable to travel to Monterey, the entire conference program will be webcast live, and online viewers will have the ability to ask questions of the presenters via the conference website, thanks to Gold Sponsor NCast.

The conference program begins at 9AM Monday, March 8 with opening remarks from CENIC Conference Committee Chair Doug Hartline of UC Santa Cruz, CENIC President & CEO Jim Dolgonas, and CENIC Board of Directors Chair David Ernst of UCOP; online viewers who visit the conference website will see a link to view the live video and audio stream and also to enter questions during the Q&A sessions at the end of each talk. Questions will be relayed live to the speakers and answered "on the air." The conference itself will also be archived for later viewing.

Be sure to visit the FULL SPEED AHEAD website and subscribe to the conference RSS Feed for more information on the conference program and other activities.

US & World Networking News:

The two-year grant will be used by a team of computer scientists at the university and the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. Google also may award an additional $500,000 for a third year, Rutgers said.

On February 8, Internet2 and NLR announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) agreeing to collaborate on developing and deploying a unified Cisco TelePresence service offering for the research and education community.

The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access to the company's new cloud computing service.

Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), Front Range GigaPoP, New Mexico/University of New Mexico (UNM), and the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) announced the formation of the Western Regional Network (WRN), a multi-state partnership to ensure robust, advanced, high-speed networking availability for research, education, and related uses through the sharing of network services.

Internet2 announced recently that nominations are now being accepted for the 2010 Internet2 Driving Exemplary Applications (IDEA) Award. IDEA Award winners are establishing new frontiers in the application of networking technology, and are considered role models for the entire research and education networking community.

With the generous support of Learning.com, eSN has compiled this collection of stories from their archives, along with other relevant resources from around the web, to help you and your staff best answer this challenge in your own schools.

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.

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