CENIC News

By now, I assume that the CENIC Today readership has made the transition into the new year and is fully engaged in meeting its challenges head-on. However, I hope that you all will have a chance to glance through the summary of the recent report released by the Federal Communications Commission on Internet Access Services: Status as of December 31, 2009.

This report, published in December 2010, summarizes information about Internet access connections in the US as of the end of 2009. It is a report of subscribership or adoption of services, not availability. Among the information presented is the following:

• 32% of residential connections throughout the US were at speeds of at least 3 Mb/s(download) and 768 kb/s (upload), and
• 63% of all residential connections were at 200 kb/s, either upload or download.

Of course, what always interests me is where California sits in comparison with the nation as a whole. That information is as follows:

• 36% of residential connections in California were at speeds of at least 3 Mb/s (download) and 768 kb/s (upload), and
• 69% of residential connections in California were at speeds of at least 200 kb/s, either upload or download.

At least California is not far behind the rest of the nation; in fact, we are slightly ahead of the national average. But is the nation itself falling behind, and do common benchmarks reflect this?

The report considers this, and I quote it here: "68% of reportable Internet access service connections ... in December 2009 were too slow in both the downstream and upstream directions, or too slow in a single direction, to meet the broadband availability benchmark adopted in the Sixth Broadband Deployment Report." In the latter report, the observation is made that the familiar 200 kb/s benchmark speed for broadband is now far out of date thanks to VoIP and the proliferation of web sites which feature rich media, and that a more adequate benchmark would be 4 Mb/s (download) and 1 Mb/s (upload).

It will be interesting to see what, if any, market forces are brought to bear to increase speeds of connection to meet this necessary new benchmark. My sense is that a major market shakeup will be necessary to significantly increase speeds of connection to enable homes in California and in the US to meet the new benchmark and take advantage of all that a connected life has to offer. And as online innovators find new ways to present connected citizens with digital content and the ability to create and share content themselves, that benchmark is sure to increase.

A further complication comes into focus when we consider that the vast majority of high-speed residential connections are provided by fiber or cable. These two connectivity options are – and will likely remain for the foreseeable future – the most likely prospect for helping communities meet the new 4 Mb/s download and 1 Mb/s upload benchmark speeds. However, fiber provides only 4% of total residential connections, and most residential areas do not offer multiple cable providers. Without the competitive pressure of multiple providers, there may not be enough motivation for providers to increase speeds.

The high-tech game-changer Google is currently experimenting with fiber to the home (FTTH) in a test project, but it seems unlikely to me that even Google is capable of delivering fiber to all residences in the US. Let's all hope that something happens to enable cost-effective higher speed residential networking throughout the country. At this point that magic bullet is not clear, but what is clear is that we would certainly all reap the benefits should that occur.

During the past two months, CENIC engineers have put a major emphasis on the consolidation of remaining OC12 OCN circuits and have continued to convert DS3 circuits riding OCNs to discrete point-to-point circuits. As of this writing, we have been able to cancel thirteen OC12 OCN circuits since this effort began.

With respect to new deployments in higher education, a new Gigabit connection was put into production for CSU Fullerton's new Irvine Campus, replacing their original 45 Mb/s DS3 and thus providing a vast increase in bandwidth. The University of San Diego also received a new 250 Mbps connection.

For California's K-12 System, CENIC placed a new Gigabit connection into service from one of our Sacramento backbone nodes to the Lake Tahoe Unified School District. The district's prior connection to CalREN was experiencing very high utilization, and thus a Gigabit connection will provide them with much needed relief over their former DS3 connection.

The 2011 CENIC Annual Conference Expanding Our Horizons is approaching fast! From March 7-9, 2011 at the UC Irvine Student Center in Irvine, CA will host three days of presentations, demonstrations, breakout sessions, and social events revolving around advanced networking for research and education.

The complete conference program is also online, with abstracts and presenter lists linked in, so be sure to check it out and begin planning your visit to UCI.

Below you can learn more about this premiere networking event, and be sure to visit the conference website for more details, and to register and reserve your hotel room! Rooms are available at a special discounted rate, but the deadline for receiving this rate is February 4, 2011, so sign up today!

CENIC is proud to announce that attendees to its 2011 annual conference, Expanding Our Horizons, will enjoy a Keynote Address by Alan Blatecky on Monday, March 7, 2011.

Alan Blatecky, NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure

Alan Blatecky is currently the Acting Director for the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) at the National Science Foundation. Previously, he served as Chief Scientist for Research and Development Initiatives for the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). RENCI is an institute that develops and deploys advanced technologies to support and enable research discoveries and practical innovations. The institute was launched in 2004 as a collaborative effort involving the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State University.

Before arriving at RENCI, Blatecky was Executive Director of Research and Programs at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and directed the National Science Foundation's Middleware Initiative, an effort to develop the underlying software foundation needed for a nationwide cyberinfrastructure to support research, from 2001 to 2003.

He has also served as Acting Division Director of Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research, Computer Information Science, and Engineering at NSF. He was executive director of the North Carolina Networking Initiative from 1998 to 2001 and a vice president at the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (now MCNC) for 11 years, where he helped establish and develop the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), one of the nation's most advanced statewide research networks.

Alan has focused on establishing, developing, and operating a variety of advanced high performance networking, computing, data, and visualization facilities as well as developing research programs, initiatives, and start-ups. He has also been deeply involved in the research, development, and deployment of cyberinfrastructure and collaborative technologies to support multidisciplinary research and education.

For further announcements about the second Keynote Speaker, please subscribe to the RSS Feed for the conference.

Attendees to the 2007 CENIC Annual Conference recall the conference visit to the UC San Diego branch of the CA Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology or Calit2. Demonstrations of the research taking place at the Institute spanned the gamut of what was possible with global advanced networks, and gave attendees a great look at the wide range of disciplines that can benefit from such networks.

Calit2@UCI's HIPerWall display

We're delighted to announce that attendees to the 2011 conference will have the chance to familiarize themselves with Calit2 as well, and see what the Institute has achieved in the intervening four years through a visit to Calit2@UCI. Among the demonstrations are those housed at the Visualization Lab and the eHealth collaboratory. The Visualization Lab is a state-of-the-art research facility focused on large-scale visualization, interactive rendering and virtual reality, and attendees will be able to view the super-high resolution HIPerWall featuring a resolution of 200 million pixels as well as planar and cylindrically tiled displays, all empowered and able to promote high-tech collaboration worldwide thanks to CalREN.

Among the eHealth applications to be showcased is the Telepresence Interactive Operating System or Telios, which promises to close the last-mile gap between highly networked facilities and remotely located patients in need of diagnosis or treatment. Telios functions on any Web 2.0-enabled computing device, and using off-the-shelf hardware and the Internet, medical enables medical specialists to take advantage of real-time video conferencing, real-time instrument telemetry, and real-time data collection and delivery.

A further application, and a novel twist on the traditional collaborative uses of advanced networks, focuses on Computer Games and Virtual Worlds, all applications requiring large bandwidth not only for the rich media content that is often exchanged during an interaction, but also for the extremely low latency such environments require.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the demonstrations that attendees to Expanding Our Horizons will enjoy. For a more complete list, please visit the online conference program.

Every year, CENIC selects applications in four areas -- Educational, Gigabit/Broadband, High-Performance Research, and Experimental/Developmental Applications -- that showcase the ways in which advanced networks are and will be changing the world we live in and our way of interacting with it in the arenas of research and education.

Below is the list of winners of the 2011 Innovations in Networking Awards. The awards ceremony will take place at the 2011 CENIC Annual Conference, Expanding Our Horizons, on Tuesday March 8. Presentations given by the winners on their projects will follow.

Educational Applications: Virtual Computing Lab Initiative

Begun as a pilot program at the Cal State Northridge and East Bay campuses, the Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) Initiative allows students to access the software applications their coursework demands from campus, home, or anywhere they have a browser and Internet connectivity. Furthermore, students have this access seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Complex, expensive software can run on the VCL and be accessed via an older PC or a Macintosh since the hardware in the VCL handles the processing.

Faculty use this same infrastructure for high-performance computing for activities and research. This project involved creating a shared VCL cloud (interconnected by CalREN) for students and faculties at multiple CSU institutions.

Thus for all the reasons listed above, the VCL enables significant cost savings and performance increases for the CSU. Expensive software need only be bought once and the Lab scaled to make it available to users in many locations without duplicating effort. Also, older and legacy equipment can be used to access the Lab. In times when new budget cuts confront California's public education every year, an application that can literally take these crises and turn them into opportunities not only to continue operations in the face of financial tight times but to actually improve and extend an institution's mission certainly deserves applause.

Gigabit/Broadband Applications: The Digital 395 Project

CENIC has taken the opportunity with its Gigabit/Broadband award to recognize projects that promise to aid in closing the "digital divide" separating the most connected Californians from their fellow citizens living in un- or underserved areas which are not easily served by the market forces that have provided other areas of the state with top-quality connectivity.

This year's winner, the California Broadband Cooperative's Digital 395 Middle Mile Project, certainly aims to do a great deal to close that gap in the areas of the state east of the Sierras between Nevada and Barstow along Interstate 395. Much of this region is dependent on decades-old telephone infrastructure and has limited, insufficient broadband middle-mile capabilities, leaving wide swaths of the Central Valley and eastern California unserved. Also, the relative lack of connectivity in the area leaves some sections vulnerable to isolation in case of fiber cuts or other events due to a lack of diverse fiber paths.

The Project proposes to build a new 553-mile, 10 Gb/s middle-mile fiber network that would mainly follow US Route 395 between southern and northern California. In addition to 36 municipalities, the project's proposed service area encompasses six Indian reservations and two military bases. More than 230 community anchor institutions will be provided access to 10 Mb/s broadband connectivity, with 2.5 Gb/s and higher-capacity fiber-based services offered to the region's last mile providers to expand or enhance service to households and businesses.

High-Performance Research Applications: Tele-Immersion for Physicians

Another strong "killer app" for advanced networks is the empowerment of medical professionals to extend their reach to one another and to their patients. UC Berkeley and UC Davis's Tele-Immersion for Physicians promises to use advanced networks to unite medical professionals not only with one another but with their data, so that the interaction between the people can become an interaction via the data in question (imaging data, for example). This brings about faster and more productive collaborations, where doctors can both see the same data at the same time instead of having to rely on individual mental models that may not reconcile with one another. This more fluid means of connecting with colleagues and information will bring about faster and more productive collaborations, where doctors need not rely on individual mental models that may not reconcile with one another.

This project seeks to unite the Tele-Immersion Lab at UC Berkeley with the Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization (IDAV) at UC Davis and is comprised of three components currently under development, tele-immersion infrastructure, real-time video capturing systems, and the algorithms needed to capture, visualize, and transmit such data. Successful experiments have been performed, and a proposal has been submitted for a Tele-Immersion node at the UC Davis Medical Center Department of Sports Medicine. Funding has been received from Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the National Science Foundation.

Experimental/Developmental Applications: CineGrid@Disney Demonstration

The international collaborative digital and rich media organization CineGrid has been recognized by CENIC in the past for empowering the production, use, preservation, and exchange of very-high-quality digital media over photonic networks. This year, the organization has been recognized for multiple demonstrations taking place at the Frank G. Wells Theatre at Disney in Burbank, CA.

The CineGrid@Disney Demonstration on October 13, 2010 was the result of a nine-month effort involving more than 50 participants from seven CineGrid member organizations: Disney Studios, NTT Network Innovation Laboratory, Skywalker Sound, Digital Domain, UCSD/Calit2, UIC/EVL, and Pacific Interface. The challenge was to bring together several different creative workflows, linking multiple remote locations, into a single room using very high-quality media running over high-speed networks for interactive, real-time remote collaboration.

Specific use cases demonstrated included: a 4K/60p telepresence virtual conference room; critical viewing of digitally restored archival film elements at 4K and 2K resolutions, streaming from a remote server; Digital Intermediate (DI) color grading; critical viewing of 3D HD stereoscopic visual effects; collaborative audio editing and mixing; and use of a SAGE multi-panel display walls for collaborative review of multimedia marketing materials.

The Demonstration relied on the active cooperation of five of CineGrid's network members -- CalREN, JGN2, GEMnet, PNWGPOP, and StarLight -- who provided 1GigE and 10GigE connectivity to the geographically separated participants; in addition, the City of Burbank provided critical last-mile connectivity at 10Gb/s from Disney to CalREN, the CineGrid hub in the Los Angeles region.

Also being recognized for the Outstanding Individual Contribution award for 2011 is Greg Scott, who has been a foundational member of the CENIC team since 2001, when he was hired to assist with the Optical Network Initiative, a project which longtime members of the community will remember well. Greg joined CENIC from UC Santa Cruz.

During Greg's tenure at CENIC, the vital work that he performed included coordinating the physical connections of the CalREN network, largely in myriad rented co-location facilities spread throughout California, each presenting unique challenges all its own. This work was extraordinarily complex and required an understanding of different types of fiber, optical equipment, power, cooling, space needs, etc. Significantly, this work also involved the ability to interact and negotiate with a variety of companies and organizations on behalf of the community that CENIC serves, from commercial firms to facilities managers at campus, college, and county office locations.

Greg's efforts have been absolutely critical to implementation of CENIC's fiber backbone network, to its ongoing operation, and to many other projects that have improved the connectivity of many educational sites across all segments on CalREN. Nearly ten million Californians owe him a significant debt of gratitude for helping make possible the network that enriches their lives every day.

The driving force behind the winner of the 2011 Innovations in Networking Award for High-Performance Research Applications is Professor Ruzena Bajcsy of CITRIS@Berkeley. Dr. Bajcsy joined CITRIS in November 2001, after devoting more than 30 years of her life to research in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence and machine perception. Bajcsy's credentials reach across the traditionally discrete fields of neuroscience, applied mechanics and computer science. She is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, a distinction few people can match. Her related research areas include artificial intelligence, computation biology, robotics, and human-computer interaction.

Attendees to Expanding Our Horizons can learn more about Dr. Bajcsy and her research on March 8, 2011 during the Awardee Presentations taking place between 1:30 and 3:30PM.

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

US & World Networking News:

On January 14, 2011, The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (ISOC) commemorated the upcoming 25th anniversary of the IETF, the Internet's premier technical standards body. The IETF gathers a large open international community of network designers, engineers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned two of the remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses -- each containing 16.7 million addresses -- to the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) on Tuesday, as predicted.

This action sparks an immediate distribution of the remaining five blocks of IPv4 address space, with one block going to each of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIR).

The Federal Communications Commission last week asked a federal court to dismiss lawsuits filed by cell phone service providers Verizon Communications and MetroPCS that challenge the FCC's new Net neutrality regulations.

The survey involved college deans across California, including those from Peninsula and South Bay schools Cañada, Skyline College in San Bruno, De Anza College in Cupertino, West Valley College in Saratoga and San Jose City College.

"We know there is a big shortage," said Janet Stringer, dean of science and technology at Cañada. "In a couple of years, it's going to be serious."

Scientists from Stanford University and the University of California at Davis have crunched the numbers and come up with a plan for how the world might economically and feasibly make the move to renewable energy in the next 20 to 40 years. Network-enabled "smart grids" are a major part of the effort.

For the members of CineGrid, who assembled recently at the University of California, San Diego, for their fifth annual conference, experimenting with "extreme" digital media has increasingly become a finely tuned balance of "3D in support of collaboration, and collaboration in support of 3D."

Prompted by new legislation, the California Community Colleges system launched the task force this month to create "a strategic blueprint" that could include measures to improve student assessments, remedial instruction and access to financial aid, officials 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.

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