CENIC News

In this issue of CENIC Today, readers will learn of two large-scale national efforts that seek to create synergy across multiple categories of partners, each with a stake in advanced networks and the applications and services that can be delivered over them. Notable about both efforts is the fact that they include public and private entities, regional and national networking organizations, and local, municipal, and state governments as well as research and education institutions. Both particularly aim to use well-served research and education institutions as incubators and growth points to help nearby communities benefit from the advances in both networking and services. Indeed, network-centered research such as that published in previous Akamai State of the Internet reports has indicated that "college towns (cities) are some of the best connected in the United States," more so than even otherwise extremely highly-connected metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

The first initiative that readers will learn about below is the US Ignite initiative, launched at the White House on June 14th. Research and education networks including CENIC, local, municipal, and state governments, federal agencies, universities, and tech corporations have come together with the aim of capitalizing on what is possible through virtualized, ultra-fast broadband networks, and "igniting" the development of next-generation Internet applications and services for societal benefit – specifically those that focus on six national priority areas: education and workforce development, advanced manufacturing, health, transportation, public safety, and clean energy. A major aim of the initiative's application development cycle is to maximize the potential created by the National Science Foundation's GENI program, which has created a national network "testbed" to enable researchers to develop future networks and applications.

The second initiative is AIR.U, a collaborative effort to accelerate the availability of broadband to un- and underserved communities using television "white spaces," heretofore unused frequency gaps in the relatively low-frequency television spectrum, treated in a previous issue of CENIC Today by my predecessor. In September of 2010 the FCC took steps to free up these unused low-frequency "whitespaces" for unlicensed use. Given that there are many more unused gaps in rural areas than in urban ones, where the skies are more crowded with signals, these gaps have the potential to aid in bringing broadband to communities in rural and remote areas. Often, rural and remotely located colleges and universities can have far better connectivity than their surrounding communities; this is often the case with CENIC member institutions located in hard-to-serve areas. Using such institutions as a "foot in the door," like US Ignite, to extend broadband connectivity to those beyond their walls is very much in the spirit of the lesson learned from the State of the Internet reports, that research and education institutions play a vital part in ensuring that all citizens can ultimately benefit from the networking, applications, and services made possible by organizations like CENIC.

Readers of CENIC Today will be kept updated as to the progress of both efforts.

The 2011-12 fiscal year concludes with network updates for the California K12 System, the California State University, and the University of California, as well as a new capability for network researchers on the CalREN backbone itself.

A new Gigabit connection was installed from the CalREN backbone node in Sacramento to the Colusa County Office of Education, and a diverse 10 Gigabit connectivity for the San Diego State University has been operationalized. Also, multiple 10 Gigabit connections have been put into production for UC Santa Cruz, with one such connection to the High-Performance Research tier of the CalREN network, and two connections to the Digital California tier.

In last month's CENIC Today, readers were introduced to CalREN VoIP Services, CENIC's unified communications solution for California's research and education institutions. Developments move forward as campuses expand their existing deployments and others begin planning to take advantage of the cost savings of either the complete CENIC VoIP offering or the SIP Trunking service, which allows sites to use their existing equipment and still enjoy flat-rate network-based calling.

San Francisco State University's deployment in its newly renovated J. Paul Leonard Library is complete, and planning in underway for the downtown San Francisco campus. Sonoma State University's initial pilot testing has been completed, and campus-wide implementation is now under way, with full completion expected by September 2012.

Pilot testing of VoIP deployment at Caltech is also underway, with first-phase rollout at the end of July 2012. Additionally, initial equipment installation is taking place at UC Santa Cruz with first test group deployment scheduled for August 2012.

Campuses that are preparing to take advantage of the SIP Trunking service include CSU Bakersfield, CSU Fresno, and CSU Channel Islands. Initial equipment installation at CSU Bakersfield is in progress, and full campus cutover is planned for late summer.

Readers of CENIC Today who are interested in learning how their campuses, sites, or institutions can benefit from either a full implementation of CalREN VoIP Services or SIP Trunking services are invited to visit voip.cenic.org and contact voip@cenic.org to learn more.

The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is currently promoting a network model known as a "Science DMZ" that encapsulates the ideal high-performance research network, conceiving of it as "a portion of the network, built at or near the campus or laboratory's local network perimeter that is designed such that the equipment, configuration, and security policies are optimized for high-performance scientific applications rather than for general-purpose business systems or "enterprise" computing."

In many ways, the conceptualization of a future network model for high-performance research is a way of reaching into the Internet's past for inspiration: to design a network model where necessary security provisions aren't barriers to scientific innovation, where dedicated systems can support the transfer of large data sets unencumbered by day-to-day network traffic, and where performance measurement is a fundamental part of the network.

However, the concept of a Science DMZ is very much a part of the present in California, where this model has already been realized on a statewide scale with the High-Performance Research tier of the CalREN network. As readers of CENIC Today know, the California Research and Education Network (CalREN), the fiber-optic backbone that connects nearly all of the state's research and education communities, is a multi-tier infrastructure, supporting three independent networks simultaneously, including a dedicated high-performance network tier especially for data-intensive science. CalREN-HPR shares all of the defining qualities of a Science DMZ, with the exception of being peripherally located. Those qualities include:

• Reducing or eliminating the packet loss that causes poor TCP performance,
• Implementing appropriate security architectures and controls so that high-performance applications are not hampered by unnecessary constraints,
• Providing an on-ramp for local science resources to access wide area science services including virtual circuits, software defined networking environments, and 100 Gigabit infrastructures, and
• Incorporating network testing, network measurement, and performance analysis through the deployment of perfSONAR.

Among the big science supported by CalREN-HPR are projects like Tele-Immersion for Physicians, the UC San Diego/Monash University international student exchange program, remote interaction scientific visualization, and the collaborative research of all kinds taking place between scientists in Mexico and California. Other examples of high-performance research made possible free of the issues and necessary limitations surrounding commodity traffic can be found in CENIC's Global Possibilities publication.

Public-private partnership will spur development of 60 next-gen apps within 5 years

A new public-private effort, the US Ignite Partnership, launched this month at the White House to capitalize on what is possible through virtualized, ultra-fast broadband networks, and "ignite" the development of next-generation Internet applications and services for societal benefit.

"Build the next generation Internet, and they will come," says Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe, "but not without encouragement and a willingness to be surprised. In the 1970s, many doubted there were uses for even 50-kilobit-per-second Internet. But soon application explorers came up with remote login, file transfer, and email. Pioneers have since found new worlds in telephony, television, publishing, commerce and social interactivity. Today, while investing in gigabit generations of Internet, we are again sending out our application explorers."

The primary goal of the US Ignite Partnership will be to catalyze approximately 60 advanced, next-gen applications over the next five years in six areas of national priority: education and workforce development, advanced manufacturing, health, transportation, public safety, and clean energy. Responsibilities of the Partnership will include connecting, convening, and supporting startups, local and state government, universities, industry leaders, federal agencies, foundations, and community and carrier initiatives in conceptualizing and building new applications. The resulting new applications should have a significant impact on the U.S. economy, including providing a broad range of job and investment opportunities.

A number of these applications are in development or early testing right now. "Today, in Cleveland, OH there are families receiving medical care to which they wouldn't otherwise have access through advanced telemedicine built on a new and flexible ultra-fast network. In Chattanooga, TN, a dozen new startups are building new applications for everything from improved transportation to disaster response to a smart energy-grid by taking advantage of the city's gigabit-to-the-home fiber optic network," says US Ignite Executive Director Sue Spradley. "The future of technology as many think about it, is possible today. And through US Ignite, we'll be helping to deploy advanced applications for Americans everywhere."

The advanced technologies that will power the US Ignite initiative have been developed through the National Science Foundation's GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) program and by US Ignite's commercial partners. Flexibility is provided through the use of Software-Defined Networking. Speed is provided by symmetric ultra-fast connections. And "GENI Racks" power the low-latency, programmable local cloud capabilities available to US Ignite applications. "The combination of these three factors changes the game for applications developers," said US Ignite Chief Technology Officer Glenn Ricart.

The US Ignite Partnership will be an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, funded through its member organizations, and will work collaboratively with its partners to implement a multi-pronged strategy. The Partnership was formed with leadership from the National Science Foundation in response to the Administration's call to ensure all Americans have access to the information and tools necessary to thrive in a 21st-century economy.

The Partnership has already entered into agreements that will bring its efforts to 25 cities across the country, including small, medium and large municipalities. Additionally, there are over 15 commercial partners who have agreed to be part of the US Ignite Partnership, including telecommunications and network powerhouses alongside local single-community efforts.

"The US Ignite test bed, together with Verizon's FiOS network, will give users in Philadelphia an altogether new ability to innovate on the fastest fiber to the home network in the United States. We welcome collaboration among users, entrepreneurs, practitioners and developers to drive the next wave of digital solutions to our most pressing societal challenges in health care, energy, education and more. Shining a bright light on the power of high-speed broadband can only result in shared experimentation and knowledge that will benefit users, the community and our country," said Kathryn Brown, Verizon's senior vice-president of Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility.

"We trust that as we succeed in demonstrating just how game-changing the next-generation of flexible, ultrafast networks and the applications they enable can be, hundreds of new companies and communities will join us," concluded Executive Director Spradley.

AIR.U to Use Super Wi-Fi networks to Extend Broadband

A consortium of higher education associations, public interest groups and high-tech companies today announced a partnership named AIR.U (Advanced Internet Regions) to deploy Super Wi-Fi networks to upgrade the broadband available to underserved campuses and their surrounding communities. By using unlicensed access to unused television channels (TV band "White Spaces"), universities and neighboring communities will be able to significantly expand the coverage and capacity of high-speed wireless connectivity both on and off campus.

As The Economist noted in a recent article: "Apart from easing bandwidth problems, white-space could lead to a wireless revolution even bigger than the wave of innovation unleashed over a decade ago when Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless technologies embraced the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band previously reserved for microwave ovens and garage-door openers."

The founding Higher Ed organizations collectively represent over 500 colleges and universities nationwide, and include the United Negro College Fund, the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, and Gig.U, a consortium of 37 major universities committed to accelerating world-leading broadband connectivity and services.

Founding partners also include Microsoft, Google, the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, a think tank based in Washington D.C., the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and Declaration Networks Group, LLC, a newly created organization established to plan, deploy and operate Super Wi-Fi technologies.

AIR.U will focus on upgrading broadband offerings in those communities that, because of their educational mission, have greater than average demand but often, because of their rural or small town location, have below average broadband. The consortium's initial goal is to plan and deploy several pilot networks in diverse university communities and create a roadmap for the rapid deployment of sustainable, next generation wireless networks as White Space equipment becomes widely available in 2013.

"Expanded broadband access has been an unaffordable hurdle in rural, underserved communities. The opportunity to acquire and leverage spectrum and broadband assets will go far in addressing the competitive disadvantage their absence created," said Robert Rucker, Vice President for Operations & Technology at the United Negro College Fund. "This effort will enable selected institutions and all the constituents they serve to have the enhanced, sustainable capacity needed to more fully experience the information age and the ability to participate and contribute to it."

ARC Federal Co-Chair Earl F. Gohl, noting the urgency of providing high-speed Internet access in rural Appalachia, welcomed the partnership. "Appalachian communities cannot afford to wait for high-speed service to be delivered to them. Partnerships like this one put existing spectrum assets to work, and as a result, more quickly provide rural communities the high-speed service they need in order to compete with the rest of the world," Gohl stated.

Super Wi-Fi networks will transmit on much lower frequencies than today's Wi-Fi, allowing the broadband signals to penetrate further into buildings and cover much larger areas. The idea for

AIR.U arose during the Gig.U Request for Information process, in which a number of rural colleges, who were not eligible to join Gig.U, realized that their constituents needed gigabit connectivity just as much as larger research-based university communities. At the same time, New America and other respondents identified Super Wi-Fi as a powerful, low-cost and well-suited path for providing this necessary upgrade to rural and underserved higher-ed communities.

"Colleges in rural areas will be the greatest beneficiaries of Super Wi-Fi networks because they are located in communities that often lack sufficient broadband, their needs are greater and there is typically a large number of vacant TV channels outside the biggest urban markets," said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute. "This combination of factors makes them ideal candidates for utilizing Super Wi-Fi spectrum to complement existing broadband capabilities."

"We could not be more delighted that AIR.U was born out of the Gig.U effort, which only further validates the need to upgrade the bandwidth available to communities surrounding our research universities and our colleges throughout the country," said Blair Levin, Executive Director of Gig.U (a project of the Aspen Institute) and the Executive Director of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. "We firmly believe this deployment of next generation broadband networks and services will be an economic tide to raise all boats."

Last December the FCC certified the first commercial devices and geolocation database that will be needed to ensure that White Space devices operate only on vacant TV channels and do not interfere with television reception. Nationwide certifications of a variety of equipment makers and database operators are expected in the coming months.

"While California's urban coastal areas are well-served by broadband, the state's remote and rural regions are extremely difficult to reach without wireless technology, and many CENIC member institutions are located in these regions," said Louis Fox, the President and CEO of CENIC. "Maintaining these institutions at the level of connectivity required for 21st century research and education is a constant challenge for CENIC," Fox added. "Thus, deploying Wi-Fi networks that expand the coverage and capacity of high-speed connectivity for research and education communities both on and off-campus is a crucial part of the CENIC mission, and we're delighted to take part in AIR.U."

"With the high concentration of postsecondary institutions throughout New England, we are thrilled to be a member of the AIR.U partnership," said Monnica Chan, Director of Policy & Research for NEBHE. "At a time when sectors like education and health are booming with innovative, disruptive technology like distance learning and tele-health, deploying Wi-Fi networks in a way that expands coverage for communities is key. Leveraging university communities to pilot this technology is precisely a step in the right direction," Chan added.

The AIR.U consortium expects one or more pilot networks will be operational by the first quarter of 2013.

A Northeastern California Connect Consortium (NECCC) Regional Broadband meeting is set for Thursday, July 19th and all interested parties are encouraged to attend.

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Center for Economic Development (CED), California State University, Chico received regional consortia broadband planning funds from California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to facilitate development of countywide broadband plans in the Northeastern California Connect Consortium (Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou & Tehama).

CENIC and CED/CSU, Chico will present and discuss progress to date.

The meeting will be simulcast live on Thursday, July 19th, 2012, 2:00-4:00 pm in the county offices of education in Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou and Tehama.

Please see the CED/CSU, Chico website for location details.

For more information or to ask questions, please contact Cathy Emerson, CED's broadband program manager, at 530-898-3862.

A renowned chemistry researcher herself, Marye Anne Fox has also had a stunning impact on the world of research and education as Chancellor of UC San Diego, a position from which she has recently retired.

During her time as chancellor of UC San Diego, the university has established new research and partnership ventures to further innovation and increase international collaboration, achieved an ambitious $1 billion campaign goal, expanded academic and campus programs and facilities, received national and international recognition in prominent university rankings and assembled a strong, diverse leadership team to ensure the university's continued rise in excellence. Under her leadership, researchers and educators at the university also created shining examples of the innovation made possible by the advanced networking provided by CENIC.

Before coming to UCSD, Fox served as North Carolina State University's 12th chancellor, as distinguished university professor of chemistry at NC State, and as Waggoner Regents Chair in chemistry and Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 1976, after a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Maryland. Fox received her B.S. from Notre Dame College and her Ph.D. from Dartmouth College, both in chemistry. She has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and to fellowships both in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association of Advancement of Science.

In October 2010, President Barack Obama named Fox to receive the National Medal of Science, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers and inventors. She has also received honorary degrees from 12 institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

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

US & World Networking News:

The potential of e-health has been discussed globally since the 1990s, and has been claimed by some as the most important revolution in healthcare since the advent of modern medicine. But approaches to implementation have differed greatly.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) announced that Gregory Bell has been named director of the Scientific Networking Division, and head of the U.S. Department of Energy's ESnet, or Energy Sciences Network.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the tentative agenda for the next open meeting scheduled for Thursday, July 19, 2012.

As a leader in STEM education, Learning.com is pleased to bring you an illuminating report on the state of STEM education in America. This report, written and published by Interactive Educational Systems Design, is regularly $249, but they are offering it at no cost.

Marye Anne Fox will step down as Chancellor at the end of July after eight years of leadership service at UC San Diego. In this interview, she reflects on her time as Chancellor and talks about what's next for her and the campus.

A group of scientists and researchers has successfully demonstrated genomic data transfer at a sustained rate of almost 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) over a new link connecting US and China research and education networks, announced BGI, the world's largest genomics organization.

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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