CENIC News

Every year, CENIC's Board of Directors engages in a two-day retreat session wherein the large-scale goals and direction for CENIC are considered, analyzed, and managed. Both the corporation's past and future are discussed, including how well CENIC has helped the California K-20 community fulfill their own missions, how those missions have changed and are projected to change, and how CENIC will have to change in order to continue to offer the vital support it provides to the state's research and education community.

This year, that retreat was held just after the start of the new fiscal year on July 10-11, 2008. The discussion was deep and wide-ranging, and five areas of particular focus were identified in addition to the existing network projects and activities such as ongoing upgrades to many K-12 and community college circuits, the continuing refresh of the High-Performance Research tier of the CalREN backbone, and the implementation of additional performance measurement capabilities.

The five project areas identified as CENIC Initiatives focus on several areas of current interest to networking, and of special interest to academic networking, with its keen interest in cost-effectiveness, cutting-edge performance, business continuity, and sustainability:

• The Last Mile Initiative: Last mile connectivity always presents a challenge in the world of high-performance networking, but especially to communities like the CENIC Associates, who require and expect connectivity throughout one of the most geographically diverse states in the country. This Initiative focuses on identifying, analyzing, and overcoming the challenges to providing diverse, reliable connectivity to every college, university and K12 county office of education through California.
• Commodity Peering: The settlement-free peering traffic traveling over CalREN has grown over time to twice the amount of the network's paid transit traffic. This has resulted in significant savings to the CENIC Associates, as the much more cost-effective peering has significantly lowered the cost of access to the commodity Internet over which CENIC's members' traffic reaches non-research and education sites. This Initiative will focus on ways to expand peering and leverage it to provide ever greater benefit to the CENIC community.
• Green IT: This Initiative focuses on the ways in which CENIC's activities can be made more "climate-aware," and how CalREN can be used to support sustainability and green computing initiatives among the CENIC community. Included is testing "cloud computing" access and investigation of the trade-offs between more power-efficient equipment versus equipment offering more capabilities at cost of greater power consumption.
• Disaster Recovery/Emergency Preparedness: This Initiative also focuses on both CENIC and the Associate community. Not only is CENIC's disaster recovery plan for its Network Operations Center a topic of focus, but the ways in which various Associates depend on CalREN to implement their own disaster recovery and emergency preparedness initiatives will be considered.
• Establishing and Communicating CENIC's Agenda: As the corporation which operates and represents one of the most advanced high-performance networks in the world, CENIC possess a unique voice on "hot issues" on behalf of the California K-20 research and education community. This Initiative recognizes the significance of that voice and includes establishing CENIC's positions on various national and state networking issues and ensuring that the major decision-makers of CENIC's member institutions are aware of CENIC's positions on these and other issues.

CENIC has begun work on these Initiatives, often with the invaluable assistance of a Board Committee or Advisory Council. During the course of the year, as major activities or milestones are reached, we'll provide updates in future issues of CENIC Today on each of these Initiatives, and we invite feedback from the CENIC community on them as well.

CENIC has been working apace to enhance connectivity for the many SONET circuits serving the California K-12 system by replacing these circuits with faster, higher-performance Gigabit connections. This month, we're delighted to announce that the Sutter County Superintendent of Schools, the Shasta County Office of Education, and Red Bluff High School (node for the Red Bluff Union High School District) have received Gigabit connectivity to the northernmost CalREN backbone node at Corning. Three other SONET circuits were also replaced with Gigabit connections: those between the Sutter County Superintendent of Schools and the California Department of Education, the Glenn and Butte County Offices of Education, and the Shasta County Office of Education and Red Bluff High School.

California's Community Colleges have also received Gigabit upgrades to several circuits. Cypress and Fullerton Colleges, serving 14,000 and 20,000 students respectively, are now enjoying Gigabit connectivity to the Los Angeles CalREN backbone node, while Grossmont College (serving 17,000 students and voted San Diego's best community college in polls conducted by the San Diego Union Tribune) and Southwestern College (serving 19,000 students) have received Gigabit connectivity to the San Diego CalREN backbone node, located at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

In addition, the connection currently serving the West Los Angeles Graduate Campus of Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management has been increased to 250 Mb/s, while CENIC has welcomed the Los Angeles Campus of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology to CalREN.

Preparations continue apace for the CENIC 2009 Annual Conference, RIDING THE WAVES OF INNOVATION, as the Conference and Program Committees work to construct a unifying theme and prepare both the Call for Presentations and the Call for Awards, both of which will be announced to CENIC Today subscribers in a special e-mail announcement along with the official unveiling of the CENIC 2009 conference website.

The conference will take place from March 9-11, 2009 at the Hilton Long Beach in Long Beach, CA. Featuring presentations, demonstrations, illustrious keynote speakers, social events, and the Innovations in Networking Awards for 2009, the conference is sure to be, as usual, one of the most significant events of the year for high-performance research and education networking.

This month, CENIC CEO Jim Dolgonas was honored to speak before the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, the Mexican House of Representatives, as a participant in a forum entitled Red Nacional del Conocimiento: Estrategia Nacional para la Conectividad (A National Knowledge Network: A National Strategy for Connectivity). The forum took place on August 26, 2008 at the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro in Mexico City, home of the Chamber of Deputies, one of the two houses of the Mexican Congress of the Union.

Distinguished participants included, among others, the former President of the Chamber of Deputies Directive Board Ruth Zavaleta Salgado, President of the Council of Political Coordination Héctor Larios Córdova, President of the Special Commission for the Promotion of Mexican Digital Access Antonio Vega Corona, Undersecretary for Communications of the Ministry of Communications and Transport Rafael Noel del Villar Alrich, Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission for the Government of India Sam Pitroda, and Secretary-General of ANUIES (National Association of Universities and Institutes of Higher Learning) Rafael López Castañares. Panels in state and federal-level infrastructure as well as university cooperation featured yet more luminaries in the realm of Mexican high-performance networking.

Jim Dolgonas's presentation, Knowledge Networking: Exploiting California's Experience, discussed the creation and governance of CENIC and its funding and fee structure, the importance of broadband networking as a major motivator of economic and research-based vigor, and the value of using a separate, fiber-based network to serve the needs of higher education and research. The presentation also included an excellent sample of the types of international research collaborations made possible by high-performance networking, as well as discussing the value of such a network to intra-Mexican efforts.

"This forum was an excellent example of the ways in which governments can consider and develop strategies to exploit high-performance networking to the benefit of their nation's research and education communities and to encourage innovation," said Dolgonas, "as well as being an example of the ways in which the international community can join forces to ensure that important lessons learned are communicated among the global research and education community. CENIC is deeply honored to have had the opportunity to participate and share ideas among such distinguished company, and we look forward to further such opportunities."

Coming on the heels of the completion of the DC Network Router Refresh, CENIC is pleased to announce the completion of the Optical Refresh for what is termed the CalREN Northern Route, consisting of the Sunnyvale, Oakland, and Sacramento backbone nodes. With the optical capacity of this section of CalREN upgraded, Associates can look forward to significant improvements of performance and ease of provisioning circuits.

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 the network has increased uniformly and 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 Northern Route Optical Refresh, 32 channels are possible between all network points along this route, with the potential for 64 channels in the future.

More flexibility and convenience in the provisioning of circuits ranging from 1 Gigabit/second to 10 Gb/s has also been made possible along the CalREN Northern Route on the completion of this refresh. For the institutions using the bleeding-edge CalREN-XD network along this backbone route, this new capability will make the provisioning of their circuits easier.

In the future, other subsections of the CalREN backbone are scheduled for similar Optical Refresh projects. Stay up to date on the new developments in future issues of CENIC Today!

US & World Networking News:

The US Congress has given the go-ahead for a new center to explore ways advanced computer and communications technologies can improve learning.

The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies will focus on "bringing education into the 21st century."

Supporters said classrooms have failed to keep up with technology innovations.

"America's reputation as an international leader rests in the hands of our youth," said Sen. Chris Dodd. "It should be among our top priorities to provide our students with the tools they need to maintain and build upon this standing."

The Beijing Olympics was not the only event in China this last month.

Without a torch or thousands of perfectly synchronized dancers, a less lavish Opening Ceremony welcomed participants to the 3rd ChinaGrid Annual Conference (ChinaGrid 2008). Held at Lanzhou University in Dunhuang, Gansu, China, the conference aimed to stimulate further exchange of experience and innovative ideas between experts and users involved in the ChinaGrid community.

UH-West Oahu (UHWO) was awarded $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Education to support the development of a highly interactive, interpersonal learning environment and the expansion of its academic curriculum. The money will be awarded over the next five years to develop programs to promote participation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines.

edZone Assets is designed to promote efficient management of your assets from acquisition through disposal. It enables improved cost control, optimizes the decision-making process and lowers the total cost of ownership. edZone Assets was developed by the K-12 High-Speed Network and is one of several free web-based applications offered to California K-12 schools.

edZone Assets can be used as a stand-alone solution or can be tied to MyTechDesk, a free work-order management solution.

California and Canada recognize that research and technology development into the future Internet and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) will play a critical role in addressing the greatest challenge facing the planet, namely global climate change. More importantly it plays to our respective strengths in ICT, cyber-infrastructure entertainment and renewable energy and will hopefully will lay the foundation for the future zero carbon economy. It is recognized that businesses and research institutions that are first to adopt a zero carbon strategy will be the global winners of this century.

The California-Canada summit on Green IT and Next Generation Internet is an invitation only event. But if you are a researcher or company that interested in California-Canada collaboration in the area of Green IT you may want to visit the link at Green Broadband to learn more. A preliminary planning meeting is being arranged in Palo Alto at HP headquarters on September 19th.

The NanoArt K12 program has been launched by Cris Orfescu, artist and scientist from NanoArt21.org in collaboration with Judith Light Feather, artist and founder of The Nanotechnology Group, Inc., which provides support to group members for the facilitation and development of innovative Nanoscale Science education globally.

The purpose of this worldwide program is to stimulate creativity and expand the visionary imaginations of our children through innovative education activities to promote a new paradigm unifying the art-science-technology intersections at the nanoscale.

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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