CENIC News:

CENIC has long held the position that broadband deployment is key not only to the state, national, and global research and education communities, but to the health and welfare of society in general. A number of years ago, CENIC sponsored forums under the Gigabit or Bust project to focus attention on the importance of broadband. And over the past several years, we have been pleased to see broadband deployment, availability, and adoption become increasingly important priorities for the California state government, legislators, and members of other agencies and bodies, such as the CPUC.

In November 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger took a significant step in assuring that California will be well equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century with Executive Order S-23-06, Twenty-First Century Government: Expanding Broadband Access and Usage in California. I've addressed this Order in a previous issue of CENIC Today, but in general terms, the Order focused on ways to increase broadband deployment, availability, and adoption, and ways to cost-effectively speed all three. It also included agency-specific responsibilities for implementation.

However, only with an understanding of the current extent of deployment, availability, and adoption throughout the state and a trustworthy judgment of what constitutes an acceptable level of connectivity can valuable efforts be aimed in the most efficient and cost-effective fashion and success judged. To this end, the Order called for the establishment of a California Broadband Task Force, consisting of 21 of the most accomplished movers and shakers in the state in the area of broadband networking. Among this task force were three members of the CENIC community: President Rollin Richman of Humboldt State University; Larry Smarr, Director of Calit2 and CENIC Board member; and Stephanie Couch, CENIC's Director of Statewide Initiatives.

For over a year, this team of specialists examined California's broadband health, with particular care given to education, healthcare, community-based organizations, and government. The states of current deployment, availability, and adoption were examined as well as the general impact of broadband on California, and on January 17, 2008, the Task force published its final report The State of Connectivity: Building Innovation Through Broadband.

The report is absolutely exhaustive and filled with information and recommendations that will be consulted for years to come. At a high level, it makes seven recommendations:

1. Build out high-speed broadband infrastructure to all Californians
2. Develop model-permitting standards and encourage collaboration among providers
3. Increase the use and adoption of broadband and computer technology
4. Engage and reward broadband innovation and research
5. Create a statewide e-health network
6. Leverage educational opportunities to increase broadband use
7. Continue state-level and statewide leadership

Not only does CENIC applaud these recommendations as an organization whose entire mission is based on the unequivocal good that comes from access to broadband networking, but we were also pleased to see the report's extensive and detailed figures concerning the current state of broadband deployment, availability, and adoption, particularly those areas that have fallen behind. CENIC has long lamented the fact that many areas in California lack access to high-speed networking and cannot fully benefit from the programs and services made available through it. Now, the state government and all organizations concerned with the "digital divide" have sound, quantifiable data on the severity of the problem. Further, the report provides sound recommendations, strategic and tactical, for advancing the deployment of broadband networking in ways that maximize the triple bottom line of time, money, and quality.

Many government reports are generated every year, and most of them sit on the shelf unread and ignored after their publication. Happily, this report is destined for quite a different fate. Its exhaustive detail and sound advice, generated by some of the best minds in the world in the arena of broadband networking, will be of immense value to all stakeholders in California and beyond. As an organization that has long held cutting-edge, widely deployed broadband as a key ingredient in California's success, CENIC is not only delighted with the report, but applauds Governor Schwarzenegger and the state government for the leadership they've shown in this area. We look forward to working to help implement the recommendations of the Task Force.

With the start of the 2008 calendar year, we have two months of updates to report on.

The various bids in response to the circuit RFP were reviewed and award letters were recently issued. Contracts are now being finalized.

CENIC and K12HSN, along with our E-rate consultants, Techmasters, invested considerable time during the past two months in the preparation of our E-rate application for fiscal year 2008-09. This year, our E-rate application is longer than in any previous year, some 1,438 pages long.

During the month of December, CENIC put four new Gigabit connections into production serving the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, Santa Clara COE, Fresno COE, and the Sonoma COE.

January saw even more activity for the K-12 system, with new connections for an additional five County Offices of Education: Solano, Contra Costa, Riverside, San Diego, and Placer, all of which now enjoy Gigabit connectivity to CalREN. In addition, a Gigabit connection was put into place between the Marin COE and the Contra Costa COE along the ring between the Sunnyvale and Oakland backbone nodes that they share with the San Francisco COE. To round out the month, two more new Gigabit connections for the Butte and El Dorado County Offices of Education were tested by CENIC and demonstrated ready for use by both offices. We anticipate that these two new connections will be put into production in the next few weeks. That's a round dozen major circuit upgrades!

As far as the community colleges are concerned, we are in the early stages of installing new Gigabit connections to three Community College Districts: Riverside, San Mateo, and Kern. The community college segment also plans to install quite a few new Gigabit connections in the months ahead.

For the California State Universities, construction projects are in various stages of completion for fiber connections for CSU San Bernardino, CSU San Marcos, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State LA. Two other CSU sites will be getting DS-3 circuit in the months ahead.

Keep an eye out for further issues of CENIC Today to learn about these and other projects!

On January 24th from 9AM – 11AM, representatives from UC Santa Cruz, the UC Office of the President, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, and state and local elected officials gathered to celebrate the kickoff of a project to connect the UC Santa Cruz campus to CalREN via dark fiber. The campus's current connections to the CalREN backbone node at Sunnyvale will be replaced with CENIC-managed "dark fiber," providing greatly increased performance and bandwidth and adding a direct, dedicated connection to the campus's Silicon Valley Center located at NASA's Ames Research Center.

From UC Santa Cruz, speakers included Larry Merkley, the departing Vice Provost of Information Technology and Chancellor George Blumenthal, both significant forces for moving the project forward. CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas spoke on behalf of CENIC, and UC Associate Vice President and CIO Kristine Hafner spoke of the importance of the project to the UC system as a whole.

To address the benefits to research, UC Santa Cruz faculty members Stan Woosley, Professor of Astronomy and Margaret Morse, Acting Dean of the Arts took part in the event as well, presenting on their respective disciplines and how they will benefit from the increased bandwidth that will be available to UC Santa Cruz with the completion of this project at the end of 2008.

Sunesys, another major player in the effort to connect the campus via dark fiber, was represented by Senior Vice President Alan Katz. Field representatives for State Senators Joe Simitian (Sen. District 11) and Abel Maldonado (Sen. District 15) as well as State Assembly Member John Laird (Assy. District 27) attended as well.

Currently, the campus's connectivity to CalREN is via two diverse, managed-service connections, one connecting the campus to the CalREN Sunnyvale node and the other to the node at Palo Alto, thus providing diversity. Each connection enables the campus to utilize two CalREN network tiers, one (CalREN-DC or "Digital California") providing service for bread-and-butter uses such as e-mail and videoconferencing and the other (CalREN-HPR or "High-Performance Research") providing specialized services for large-application users.

With the kickoff of this new project, the connections to the Sunnyvale backbone node will be replaced with CENIC-managed dark-fiber connections, which will provide for increased robustness and performance, as well as upgrading the campus's connection to the CalREN-HPR network tier from 1 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s.

With connectivity such as this, the campus will enjoy unparalleled ability to collaborate with research colleagues around the world. The increased bandwidth and robustness of the new connectivity benefits not only research but education programs as well, such as the UC College Prep program, which delivers not only text-based course content but videoconferencing and rich media in order to empower students in traditionally underserved communities to prepare for college eligibility. High-bandwidth content like this requires high-performance networking in order to be delivered in a reliable and useful fashion.

The campus will also receive a dedicated Gigabit connection to its Silicon Valley Center located on the campus of the NASA Ames Research Center, itself a member of the CENIC community. Currently, connectivity to the Silicon Valley Center for the main UC Santa Cruz campus comes over a shared connection to the Ames Research Center. Thanks to a specially provisioned dark-fiber connection between the CalREN backbone Sunnyvale node and the Silicon Valley Center, the center will enjoy an extremely high-bandwidth connection of its own via which it can reach the UC Santa Cruz campus as well as the rest of California's K-20 R&E community, the nation, and the world.

As an organization that represents all of California's K-20 community, CENIC also hopes to expand access to the new fiber path to both the Santa Cruz County Office of Education and local community colleges such as Cabrillo College.

The importance of high-bandwidth networking doesn't stop at the campus border, however, a point made during the conference both by Jim Dolgonas and Kristine Hafner. Said Dolgonas at the event, "This project [brings] ... gigantic capacity to the campus, but it's important for us to remember that we have to continue to build out the campus infrastructure as well."

Hafner addressed the issue further, saying that the University of California has "an incredibly robust backbone network that links our institutions to each other and to the world, but we do not have that situation at the level of our campuses." She then mentioned an estimate obtained by the UC system of $80 to $100 million to upgrade the networking on each UC campus to the point where the ultra-high bandwidth provided by CalREN is accessible throughout the campus. As a result, stimulating investment in robust, high-performance campus local networks is a priority for the UC system.

The UC Santa Cruz campus itself has been a showpiece of research and education for the betterment of society since its creation in 1965. It currently boasts several prestigious research institutes and centers, including the Centers for Adaptive Optics and RNA Biology, the Institutes for Particle Physics, for Marine Science, for Innovation in Environmental Research, for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and of course Lick Observatory. UC Santa Cruz is part of CITRIS (the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society) and QB3 (the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research), two of the California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The campus is also part of UC College Prep, which develops and distributes high-quality courses and course content to benefit underserved California students.

From the humanities, social sciences, and the arts to the physical and biological sciences to its 10-year-old engineering school, UC Santa Cruz has an excellent reputation for groundbreaking research.

A dedicated ultra high-bandwidth link now connects Big Science researchers in Australia and California, thanks to high-performance networking. CalREN and Pacific Wave comprise the US leg of the trip, with Southern Cross and AARNet completing the journey across the Pacific Ocean and through Australia. The connection was unveiled in a dramatic way on January 16, when a 96 Megapixel visualization wall connecting the University of Melbourne and Calit2 was demonstrated to Australian senior politicians and researchers. The wall consists of 24 30-inch displays which can be used to link researchers around the world not only with vast and difficult to visualize data sets but with one another at previously unheard of data rates.

The connection marks the entry of Australia into Calit2's OptIPlanet collaboratory, a next step along the lines of the enormously successful OptIPuter project which pushed the concept of "fiber optic network as backplane" to its limit. Using this concept, the OptIPuter project demonstrated the creation of an extremely high-performance world-sized computer which linked researchers across the globe at dazzling data transfer speeds. This empowered researchers to engage in global-scale experiments where displays, complex instruments like telescopes or deep-ocean observatories, data, and experimenters themselves could be half a world apart yet working together seamlessly in real time to carry out investigations that would not have been possible otherwise.

The OptIPortal visualization wall in Melbourne was promptly christened, of course, the OzIPortal and is the largest such wall in all of Australia.

With such a stellar lineup of keynote speakers, CENIC 08: Lightpath to the Stars attendees will be seeing stars in their eyes in more ways than one this coming March.

Monday's Keynote Speaker will be Rachelle Chong, CA Public Utilities Commissioner and a member of the Governor's Broadband Task Force, which released its final report on the state of CA broadband deployment, availability, and adoption in January. Commissioner Chong brings to the CPUC a unique perspective as a federal regulator, long time communications lawyer, small business owner, Web entrepreneur, and mediator.

On Tuesday, attendees will enjoy a Keynote Address by former NASA Astronaut and National Reconnaissance Chair at the Naval Postgraduate School Dan Bursch. A former Naval Officer, Dan Bursch's primary responsibility is to ensure that education and research at NPS supports the mission of the National Reconnaissance Office, and he serves as a professor in several space systems courses. He is also supporting a new initiative at NPS that will provide more hands-on instruction for space systems students.

Wednesday's Keynote Address will be delivered by Professor of Astronomy Sandra Faber of UC Santa Cruz and Lick Observatory in San Jose, part of the University of California Observatories. Sandra Faber's research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies and the evolution of structure in the universe. She utilizes ground-based optical data obtained with the Lick 3-meter and Keck 10-meter telescopes; she also has several projects on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). She does most of her work with graduate students and has several ongoing collaborations with former students which have lasted many years.

As well as our Keynote Speakers, CENIC is delighted to offer you a sneak peek at the conference program. With illustrious speakers anticipated from all segments of CENIC Associates and topics ranging from remote observing and astrochemistry to grid computing, new media, collaborative teaching and learning, and workforce development, you're sure to find plenty to fill all three days of conference attendance.  We'll be adding more and more presentations to the conference website and a scheduled program before long, so be sure to check back and watch your inbox for more updates as more information is added.

And if you're planning to reserve a hotel room at the Oakland Marriott City Center, the official CENIC 08 conference hotel, you'll want to do so soon to take advantage of the special discounted conference rate of $169/night. The discounted rate ends on February 16, 2008, but you can visit the conference website to reserve your hotel room online. The Oakland Marriott City Center is located in the heart of downtown Oakland and convenient to fabulous shopping and dining as well as historical sites such as Jack London Square and Oakland's Chinatown.  The conference hotel is also extremely conveniently located within easy walking distance to BART and Amtrak stations (click links for walking maps), and through them may be reached from all major Bay Area airports.  The conference website, shown below, features Hotel & Travel information as well as links to local points of interest when visiting Oakland.

And lastly, don't forget you can pre-register online! Payment options for our attendees have expanded for increased convenience.  Your options now include payment by check before the conference as well as three options for payment by major credit card:

• You can register and pay online at the same time.
• You can also register now and pay later. If you choose this option, you will receive a Payment ID via e-mail and link that you can use at any time.
• You can also register and pay at the conference, using your Payment ID and a major credit card.

Even more exciting announcements are in store in the weeks and months ahead, so to make sure that you can take part in "Lightpath to the Stars," be sure to register today!

National Networking News:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday proposed a 2008-2009 state budget that includes across-the-board cuts in state spending, including reductions at the University of California, to address a projected $14.5 billion state budget deficit.

The governor's proposal would increase funding under his "compact" with the UC system, but then apply a reduction of $332 million, or 10 percent – the same percentage reduction proposed for most state General Fund programs. That would leave UC with a net state funding reduction of $109 million, or 3.4 percent, compared with the current year. However, it also would leave state funding more than $400 million below the level of the Regents' proposed budget for 2008-09.

In December 2007, Internet2 announced that Robert (Rob) Vietzke will join its staff as the Executive Director of Network Services, reporting directly to the President & CEO. In this role, Rob will be responsible for the operation of Internet2's new advanced nationwide network, and will support the network's connections with Internet2's network connectors, major federal networks and more than 80 international research networks. He assumes this position after helping to lead the deployment of the Internet2 Network over the past 18 months.

"We are delighted that Rob will be a key member of the Internet2 team. His deep experience in operating and deploying advanced networks will serve as an incredible asset to our community as we continue to focus on robust, state of the art network capabilities," said Doug Van Houweling, Internet2 president and CEO. "The network plays a vital role in supporting the cyberinfrastructure needs of members. Rob's leadership in this capacity will ensure that Internet2 provides its members critical resources they need for today and well into the future."

On Jan. 16, with the launch of the online collaboration software Google Apps at USC, students will be able to say goodbye to current university e-mail quotas.

Through an agreement between USC and Google, students will enjoy Gmail (Google’s e-mail program) in an ad-free environment, while continuing to send and receive e-mail at their @usc.edu e-mail addresses.

Google Apps at USC is the name of USC’s installation of Google Apps for Education, a suite of online software applications that Google offers to educational institutions and nonprofit organizations. The package includes Gmail, Web-based word processing and spreadsheet programs, sharable calendars, chat and more.

This report proposes bringing the federal government, state governments, and the private sector together as part of a new approach to making high-speed Internet services available across the country. The report also contains a detailed analysis of broadband deployment in the United States and in key countries around the world.

IBM, The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ), which is a Center of Excellence of the University of Medicine and Dentistry-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, announced on January 25th a collaborative research effort to develop diagnostic tools which can improve the accuracy of predicting patients' responses to treatment and related clinical outcomes. Through the use of advanced computer and imaging technologies that facilitate comparisons of cancerous tissues, cell and radiology studies, researchers and physicians expect to determine more accurate cancer prognoses, more personalized therapy planning and, subsequently, the discovery and development of new cancer drugs.

This new project is a natural extension of the "Help Defeat Cancer" (HDC) project in which IBM's World Community Grid was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of characterizing different types and stages of disease based upon the underlying staining patterns exhibited by digitally imaged cancer tissues. World Community Grid is a virtual supercomputer that gains its resources by thousands of volunteers donating their unused computer time.

The GLIF Working Group Meeting for Winter 2008 was held at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu from 19-20 January 2008, and the proceedings from this meeting are now available online. Updates from the Control Plane and Technical Working Groups are available, as well as the welcome given by SURFnet's Erik-Jan Bos.

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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