CENIC News

It would be difficult to write this month's article on anything but the most talked about subject in America today: the new administration's economic stimulus package. The initiative holds great promise for both economic recovery and broadband growth.

As this is written, we know that the version of the bill that passed the House includes $7 billion for broadband and that the version currently awaiting discussion and vote in the Senate includes $8 billion. It has been reported to me by individuals knowledgeable about the creation of the bill that the broadband portion was originally intended to be a much larger amount, over $20 billion.

Why the size of the broadband portion was reduced is not entirely clear, nor is predicting what California in particular could anticipate as a result of this bill. The bill itself specifies that the dollars are to be used to bring high-speed Internet access to rural and underserved areas, a purpose that would certainly impact the amount of funding California might receive as our rural population alone exceeds that of many entire states. Also unclear is the way the funding would be administered -- whether it would be given as block grants to administer/distribute, be made available as Federal grants that could be applied for, or distributed via other mechanisms.

What is clear, however, is that California needs these dollars far more than is generally understood, and given the state's importance to the overall economy both nationally and worldwide, investments here can pay off profoundly far beyond the state border. I've been asked several times for my opinion on how I'd like to see broadband funds used in California. Our schools, colleges, and universities are the envy of the world and a major driver of our economic engine, and with budget cuts looming across all educational segments, network funds are needed to help them remain competitive in the global economy. Therefore, my wish list understandably starts with funding to help schools, colleges, and universities expand and upgrade their networking infrastructures. In terms of stimulating jobs, our community can easily expect a great return on investment for any dollars spent on networking, which would not only create jobs in the short term but also assure capabilities for students, teachers, faculty, and researchers that would boost economic strength well into the coming century.

A model for the use of stimulus funds for broadband in un- and underserved areas is more difficult to propose. My thought would be to distribute grants, based on competitive application, to increase broadband availability as well as existing broadband speeds. Applicants for grants could include incumbent carriers, competitive local carriers, communities, and others, and the awards would be based on which proposal could best achieve the desired outcomes. Importantly, awards should also be large enough to make a real difference and vary in percentage by area of the state, so that the most difficult to serve communities would be eligible for the largest grants. Perhaps such communities could expect a grant to cover 90% of their infrastructure costs, whereas areas with higher broadband penetration would be eligible for 25% of costs to enable them to upgrade their speed of service without passing on higher costs to consumers.

We can't foresee the cost of doing everything I propose above. But, we do know that if California were to receive a significant share of the final stimulus funding for broadband, perhaps $600 million, even that would fall far short of what is need to accomplish what I've outlined here; that might require the lion's share of the stimulus package – a package meant to boost an entire economy dependent on many more mechanisms than broadband penetration.

The level of funding in the stimulus package, while right for creating or maintaining jobs, is only a first step toward satisfying our state's sizable need for telecommunications infrastructure investment, itself yet another major driver of economic strength. However, the current package is a great and much-needed start and can help to shore up the economic woes facing the nation and the world, so that the further necessary investment to achieve what I've proposed here will be possible in the near future.

We'll all have to stay tuned to see how the broadband stimulus funding plays out.

It's been two months since readers of CENIC Today have heard from CENIC about current network enhancements, and you'll be pleased to see how we've ended the old year and begun the new: with plenty of activity to increase bandwidth and robustness, especially for California's K-12 and community college Associates.

A Gigabit circuit has been installed between the Chaffey Joint Unified HSD and the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, as well as between Chaffey JUHSD and the CalREN backbone node site at Tustin, between the Fort Bragg USD and the Mendocino County Office of Education, and between the Napa Valley USD and the Sonoma COE. A DS3 replacement circuit was also installed between the Ventura and Santa Barbara County Offices of Education.

For California's Community College System, new circuits include a Gigabit circuit between East Los Angeles College and the CalREN backbone node site at Tustin, and two DS3 circuits between Woodland Community College (part of the Yuba Community College District) and the CalREN backbone node site at Sacramento, and and between the Long Beach City College's Pacific Coast Campus and the CalREN backbone node site at Los Angeles.

CENIC Associates will notice nothing out of the ordinary -- the same excellent service, the same responsiveness to the needs of California's research and education missions, and more importantly the same phone numbers. However, one thing has changed during the month of January -- the location of the CENIC Headquarters. On January 24, CENIC relocated its main offices and Network Operations Center from Cypress to La Mirada. The CENIC Sacramento office has not moved and is still located at 1415 L Street, Suite 870.

E-mail addresses and phone numbers for the CENIC offices and the CENIC NOC have not changed, and Associates should continue to use those that they have been using. The new address for the CENIC main office in Orange County is the following:

CENIC
16700 Valley View Ave. Suite 400
La Mirada, CA 90638

This address, along with an interactive Google map, can be found on the CENIC website. Again, CENIC e-mail addresses and phone numbers have not changed, and all Associates can continue to use the same contact information they have used thus far.

As anyone involved in the organization can attest, CineGrid is more of a "who" than a "what." The use of high-performance photonic networks to support extremely high-quality digital media may be the topic to which the organization is devoted, but CineGrid itself exists to foster the international community of people who devote themselves to bringing this all about, including those who generate the content, those who transport it, and those who develop the tools necessary to enable photonic networks to support these projects. Members span the globe, and periodic workshops are held at one of the world's most networked university locations -- the home of Calit2@UCSD, Atkinson Hall on the UC San Diego campus.

The most recent CineGrid Workshop was held from December 7-10, 2008 and included not only three days of workshop programming but a day of tutorials and introductory information aimed at further expanding the CineGrid community to any institutions curious about how they might participate. Presentations during the tutorials part of the workshop program were given by CineGrid luminaries from Amsterdam, Toronto, San Diego, Tokyo, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The three days following were composed of presentations and demonstrations by some of the most active researchers in the field of digital media over photonic networks, centering on CineGrid member projects, the latest hardware, software, and networking technology developments underpinning the projects, and the ways in which CineGrid supports various disciplines. Among these presentations was one given by CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas, Connecting to CineGrid in California. A list of the various CineGrid luminaries who participated as well as the topics of their presentations and demonstrations can be found at the CineGrid website.

Preparations for RIDING THE WAVES OF INNOVATION, the CENIC 2009 Annual Conference, are entering the homestretch in February, the final month before conference attendees, presenters, Keynote Speakers, and the 2009 Innovations in Networking Award Winners come together in Long Beach.

Since the last issue of CENIC Today, we were pleased to announced the second Keynote Speaker, John Windhausen of Telepoly Consulting. He joins Keynote Speaker Dr. Guru Parulkar of Stanford University and the Clean Slate Design for the Internet program.

John Windhausen provides legal, legislative, and regulatory consulting services to a variety of non-profit and corporate entities through Telepoly Consulting. After beginning his career as a staff attorney with the FCC in 1984, he moved in 1987 to the staff of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, where he served for nine years. His work included the Cable Act of 1992, the Spectrum Auction Act of 1993 and the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 1996, he became General Counsel of a consumer advocacy organization called the Competition Policy Institute.

Windhausen is known for his insights into the importance of broadband as an economic and social driver, the obstacles to its universal deployment, and the various actions needed to ensure that the United States does not fall behind other nations in this. More information about both of the prestigious Keynote Speakers that conference attendees will hear can be found on the conference website.

Online registration is also still open for the conference, and your payment options are as flexible and convenient as ever. You can use the Registration ID you will be provided to view the up-to-date Attendee List online as many times as you wish and to complete your payment securely at any time using a major credit card at Verisign.

Also, the deadline by which you would wish to reserve your hotel room at the Hilton Long Beach to take advantage of the special discounted conference rate of $179/night has been extended to February 17, 2009. You can visit the conference website to reserve your hotel room online.

US & World Networking News:

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the University of California, San Diego, one of the nation's greenest universities, joined for a groundbreaking symposium on January 22-23 to explore how to improve the technology sector's energy efficiency while developing innovations to help other industries reduce their carbon footprints, Greening the Internet Economy. Keynotes and panel discussions are also available for online viewing.

Last November, EDUCAUSE held a two-day IT Greening and Sustainability Summit in Adelphi, Maryland, at the University of Maryland, University College. Those participating included several thought leaders in the industry­a cross-section of relevant higher education professionals, as well as those outside the academy.

EDUCAUSE has released a white paper, The Role of IT in Campus Sustainability Efforts, which captures key findings from the brainstorming, discussion, and resource sharing and outlines a higher education agenda for moving forward.

Recognizing that energy is at the heart of many of the world's tribulations -- economic, environmental and political -- Stanford is establishing a $100 million research institute to focus intently on energy issues. The $100 million in new funds will enable the hiring of additional faculty and support new graduate students, in addition to the more than $30 million in yearly funding now spent on energy research.

The new Precourt Institute for Energy will draw on deep scientific expertise from across the campus and around the world.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has released a report calling for more widespread deployment and use of interactive videoconference in California K-12 schools. The report, entitled A Blueprint for Strengthening K-12 Videoconferencing in California, is based on the consensus of a group of experts from education technology, classroom instruction, and school administration who met for a two-day workshop at the museum in May.

In response to LACMA's "call to action," the K-20 California Educational Technology Collaborative (K20CETC) has agreed to implement many of the actions steps called for in the blueprint, working through its constituent members.

For more information, contact Toni Guglielmo at LACMA, phone 323-932-5877 or e-mail aguglielmo@lacma.org.

Thanks to an ingenious new strategy devised by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Intel Corporation, computer network administrators might soon be able to mount effective, low-cost defenses against self-propagating infectious programs known as worms

Many computers are already equipped with software that can detect when another computer is attempting to attack it. Yet the software usually cannot identify newly minted worms that do not share features with earlier marauders. When network managers detect suspicious activity, they face a major dilemma, said Senthil Cheetancheri, who led efforts to develop the strategy. "The question is, 'Should I shut down the network and risk losing business for a couple of hours for what could be a false alarm, or should I keep it running and risk getting infected?'"

A higher-education study released this week highlighted six technologies that soon could change college campuses -- including mobile devices with abundant applications, cloud computing that bolsters data accessibility, and web tools that could make campus-based research faster and more thorough.

The sixth annual Horizon Report, created and published by the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, profiles six technologies that will have a prominent role on college campuses in the next one to five years.

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.

Subscription Information: You can subscribe and unsubscribe to CENIC Today at http://lists.cenic.org/mailman/listinfo/cenic-today.