CENIC News & CENIC 08 Special Report:

Many of our subscribers know that CENIC acquired our own fiber over which the CalREN backbone network operates. And our network is connected to many other similar fiber-based research and education networks across the world. The main purpose for this interconnection of R&E networks, of course, has been support for various research and teaching initiatives. But the increasing concerns over data center power consumption costs and its effect on global warming have highlighted other important potential benefits of fiber-optic networks such as ours. Of particular importance is the power required to keep such data centers cool; not only does the very process of artificial cooling naturally generate more heat than it removes, but it also creates a substantial carbon “footprint” through consuming large amounts of electricity often generated by less than environmentally friendly means.

Today, the costs both economic and environmental of powering and cooling data centers have become a major issue. According to a March 20, 2008 BusinessWeek article titled It’s Too Darn Hot, the cost of power consumption by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2006. Andy Karsner, Assistant US Energy Secretary for energy efficiency points out that “the demands for computing will grow exponentially, but electric consumption can’t grow the same way.” So, there is a major push to find solutions to this cooling conundrum.

Featuring cheap energy and a chilly climate that reduces the need for cooling data centers, northern countries such as Canada and Iceland may offer a natural solution, and many major commercial companies are considering locating data centers in these places.

However, locating data centers far from most human habitation in effect turns data centers into yet another advanced piece of isolated and remote scientific equipment – like telescopes or deep-ocean observatories – that must nevertheless be accessed quickly and transparently.

Happily, the means to achieving this are already with us and used every day by the world’s research and education communities: optical networks like CalREN which are already used to provide a cost-effective means of shipping data to and from such locations. CalREN provides CENIC Associates with an excellent means of dealing with escalating power demands as well as answering the increasingly pressing question of climate change. Consolidated data centers even within California offer considerable opportunity to control costs, though with worldwide fiber connectivity, facilities beyond California and even beyond the United States are quite attractive, too.

CENIC would be pleased to assist with any such initiatives of our Associates.

As in years past, CENIC participated in the recently held California Community College annual conference of the CISOA/RP (Chief Information Systems Officers Association/Research & Planning Group) with a booth in the vendor display area and as presenters.

"Having a presence at the CISOA conference was a great way to both meet with member institutions and communicate the system office plans for improving the campus connections to the CalREN network," said Ed Smith, who also presented the planned improvements in a break-out session along with Catherine McKenzie from the CCC System Office (shown at right) and Deborah Ludford from the North Orange County Community College District. Ms. Ludford is Vice-Chair of CENIC's DC Technocal Advisory Committee (DC-TAC) this year and will assume the position of Chair of the DC-TAC next fiscal year.

CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas also attended the conference and gave an update on current and upcoming CENIC activities during the System Office presentation.

Over the past half a dozen or more years’ concerns have been expressed regarding the availability of broadband services in California, especially in rural areas. Efforts such as CENIC’s own Gigabit or Bust initiative sought to raise the visibility of networking needs across the state.

Shortly after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election to office, he explored using technology to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of state operations. Subsequently, he issued an Executive Order directing state agencies to consider the use of videoconferencing as a way to avoid travel costs. Closely on the heels of a major report by the CA Public Utilities Commission on the status of broadband in California, the Governor issued an Executive Order in October 2006 calling for the creation of a Broadband Task Force to identify steps toward increasing broadband deployment in California.

Pursuant to the Executive Order, Dale Bonner, Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing, convened and led the task force. The California Broadband Task Force brought together public and private stakeholders to identify barriers to broadband deployment and approaches for reducing them, to identify opportunities for increased broadband adoption, and enable the creation and deployment of new advanced communication technologies. An accurate snapshot of areas in the state that lack adequate access to broadband services is one of many valuable outcomes of the work of the task force.

The final Task Force report was released on January 17, 2008. The ongoing attention that Governor Schwarzenegger and his staff have given to broadband technology issues is admirable. Through his leadership and his willingness to elevate the importance of broadband deployment and usage in California, the Governor has contributed to a more technology friendly climate in the state, paving the way for additional opportunities for advancement in this area.

California Broadband Initiative Manager Anne Neville accepted the award on behalf of the California Broadband Task Force.

The California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) represents the state’s most recent attempt to improve education by tying graduation to a single standardized measure of competency. Statewide, approximately 48,000 students in the Class of 2006 found themselves unable to get a diploma due to the need to pass one or both portions of the Exit Exam (mathematics and/or English Language Arts), and controversy ensued. In response, the State Legislature made block grants available through the California Community College Chancellor’s Office to local Community Colleges that wanted to serve this population of students. The Butte-Glenn and Lake Tahoe Community College Districts independently applied for grants, and finding they shared a common vision on how students should be served, they entered into a partnership, planting the seed that would become the statewide CAHSEE: Stepping into Your Future initiative.

Given limited funds, students in roughly forty counties were not going to be able to be served by grant-funded community college programs. Even if sufficient funds were available to offer programs in every county, many 18 and 19 year old students would not be able to participate due to the need to work or meet the needs of young children. That reality drove the Butte-Glenn CCD, the Lake Tahoe CCD and their partners to the conclusion that online opportunities for students were sorely needed.

Teachers, faculty, and staff from the state’s K-20 education community, public libraries, and nonprofit community technology centers have worked together to develop two highly engaging hybrid courses that prepare students across the state for the CAHSEE. This CalREN-enabled program includes online interactive exercises as well as “face time” with instructors via web based collaboration tools and/or videoconferencing.

Gordon D. Cremer (Bute-Glenn Community College), Stephanie Couch (CENIC), and Rudy Rizo (LA USD) accepted the award on behalf of CAHSEE: Stepping Into Your Future.

Today, the typical Office of Intercollegiate Athletics is a far different place than what most people knew as “the gym” in past student days. Walk into any coach’s office and you will see, besides the normal sports gear, piles and piles of video tapes and DVDs. Video of athletes’ performance is critical to coaching today, and all teams analyze their opponent’s previous performance. However, to prevent wealthier schools from having an unfair advantage, NCAA rules disallow in-person scouting of opponents. Instead, and with the NCAA’s blessing, each team videotapes its own games and exchanges these video files with their next opponent one week before a given game.

Prior to the 2005 season, these video exchanges consisted of exchanging physical media via courier services such as Federal Express. This was an onerous task for all schools, and was particularly so for those schools located long distances from airports or without appropriate courier services. It was also very costly; for example, at UCLA these courier services could cost roughly $6,000 per year per sport.

Many of the video coordinators at the 110 division I-A NCAA schools realized there must be an electronic solution, but attempts to use FTP (the Internet-based File Transfer Protocol) were deemed failures due to extremely long and unreliable file transfer times. For example, a single football game is typically an 18 Gigabit video file, and teams must exchange all of their current season’s past games each weekend. A single game video transfer could take 10-15 hours and by the end of the season, a team may have ten or more games to transfer.

At a Pac-10 video coordinators’ meeting prior to the 2005 football season, Steve Pohl of the University of Oregon suggested the Pac-10 look into using the high-bandwidth connections that academic colleagues already enjoyed through CalREN in California and interconnections across Internet2 to universities in other states. UCLA Video Coordinator Ken Norris contacted Chris Thomas of UCLA’s Office of Information Technology asking for assistance. Together, the two men designed a pilot program involving four conference schools (UCLA, USC, Stanford – all CalREN-connected CENIC member institutions, and the University of Washington, plus a site outside the Pac-10 conference, Notre Dame. Instead of using commercial Internet connections, these sites interconnected via high-bandwidth links that all of these schools have to each other via advanced next generation Internet networks for high-speed FTP-based electronic video exchange for the 2005 season, using a specially tuned FTP implementation from the French National Particle Physics Institute in Lyon, France. The increase in speed of transfer over these links turned a previously unsuccessful solution into a viable option.

Based on the success of this pilot, all ten video coordinators for the Pac-10 voted unanimously to move to full electronic exchange for the 2006 season, and the new technology was an unqualified success. No Pac-10 school exchanged conference video via courier, and all participants were delighted by the time savings and ease of electronic video exchange. The success of the program in fact was a significant motivator for some schools to upgrade their connectivity and to improve their own campus networks to eliminate bottlenecks.

The ten Pac-10 video coordinators also responded to the outstanding reliability and predictability of CENIC’s CalREN services, and in some particularly illuminating ways. At the beginning of the season, vide coordinators were downloading videos on Saturday night to be sure of meeting their coaches’ 5:00 PM Sunday deadlines. As they gained confidence in the system, however, downloads began to take place after noon on Sunday, a clear expression of faith that the network could be counted on for quick, robust delivery of large video files on a regular basis.

Ken Norris and Chris Thomas of UCLA accepted the award.

The bleeding-edge category of Experimental/Developmental Applications includes some of the most far-sighted and visionary research projects anywhere on the globe, and in 2008, CENIC found it impossible to choose only one winner. Consequently, a tie was declared between the international high-energy physics computing project UltraLight and the equally global, super-high-quality digital media exchange and production projects of CineGrid.

“Ties aren’t the sort of thing we work toward,” says CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas. “We have four categories, and we generally aim to give four awards. But this year, choosing between UltraLight and CineGrid would simply have been impossible. Both projects are absolutely stunning and showcase everything that a researcher could hope for in terms of what reliable high-performance networking can help them achieve.” Adds Dolgonas, “Both projects will be influential in shaping broadband applications for decades to come, and we’re thrilled that CENIC could play a central part in enabling them. Enabling California’s research and education community is, after all, why we were created.”

The UltraLight collaboration is comprised of an international team of researchers currently working on advanced global systems and networks to meet the needs of experiments due to begin at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in 2008. In a demonstration at the SuperComputing 07 conference held last November in Reno, NV, seven individual 10-Gigabit fiber paths (six provided by CENIC and one by Internet2) were used bi-directionally at high efficiency to move vast files of scientific data at blinding transfer rates of 80 Gigabits per second of bi-directional transfer. This is the equivalent of twelve full-length Hollywood movie DVDs in one second!

This achievement relied in part on one of the 2006 Innovations in Networking Award Winners, MonALISA. MonALISA, developed over the last six years by Caltech and its partners at CERN and the Universitatea Politehnica Bucharest, is a globally scalable framework of services to monitor and help manage and optimize the operational performance of computing grids, networks, and running applications in real time. This framework is ideal for creating and dynamically managing dispersed collaborative environments over Internet networks.

Accepting on behalf of the UltraLight project was Julian Bunn of the California Institute of Technology.

From the very tiny, very specialized world of high-energy physics, the next award winner moves to the world of digital cinema and entertainment. The international nonprofit CineGrid promotes research, development, and deployment of ultra-high performance digital media – sound and picture – over advanced networks, using grid computing technologies for networked collaboration. CineGrid has organized a number of experimental projects designed both to showcase what advanced networks can support in the world of digital media, and to test those same networks, pushing them as far as they can go in the pursuit of the most immersive possible experience. CineGrid @ Holland Festival 2007 certainly did that and more.

On June 20-21, 2007 CineGrid recorded and streamed live 4K digital motion pictures with 5.1 surround sound of the operatic performance “Era la Notte” from the Holland Festival in Amsterdam over CalREN and partner IP networks to California. The 75-minute live performance was transmitted nearly 10,000 kilometers, in real time, to the University of California, San Diego where it was viewed in 4K on a large screen, with surround-sound, by an audience in the 200-seat auditorium of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). People in the audience in San Diego reported that they felt as if they were actually in the concert hall in Amsterdam.

This technical experiment was particularly interesting for many reasons but primarily because live performances require utterly reliable throughput and low-latency responsiveness. A less than perfect connection would be instantly noticed and may not be fixed later since, during a live performance of course, there is no “later.”

The CineGrid @ Holland Festival 2007, which is being recognized for the 2008 Experimental/Developmental Award, confirms that even these most demanding types of streaming media distribution can be done over high-performance fiber-optic infrastructure such as CalREN, today.

Accepting on behalf of CineGrid was Tom DeFanti (Calit2@UCSD), Laurin Herr (Pacific Interface), Natalie von Osdol (Pacific Interface), and Naohisa Ohta (Keio University).

CENIC will also present an Outstanding Individual Achievement award for 2008 to Jerry Keith in recognition of the outstanding contributions he has made to CENIC and the CalREN community. Not only did Jerry serve as Business Advisory Council (BAC) chair and CENIC Conference Committee chair multiple years, but he assumed both roles during times of transition, when strong leadership was most essential.

As chair of the CENIC Conference Committee in 2004, the first year in which we handled planning directly, Jerry adeptly managed the relationship with our external events coordinators, providing an essential link between these coordinators and the conference planning committee. As continuing chair of the Conference Committee in 2005, when we brought all logistics for this event in-house, Jerry ensured that every detail was addressed, leading to a successful and well-run conference. In addition to the myriad conference issues, he also provided the wireless equipment and technical resources to create a back-up network connection both years when he realized previous conferences had not included a backup link. Two years later, as the 2007 Conference Chair, he once again provided much-needed guidance due to the departure of our in-house conference coordinator just two short months before the event.

Jerry also took over the role of BAC Chair at a pivotal time. In 2004-05, amid spirited discussion related to the transition of our funding model, Jerry led the successful effort to establish a new fee schedule for member institutions.

CENIC is recognizing Jerry Keith for his leadership in two highly visible areas of interest to the CalREN community during times when good leadership was critical. We are honored to provide him with this well-deserved recognition

This year’s Keynote Speakers were as illustrious as the winners of the 2008 Innovations in Networking Awards, with Rachelle Chong, California Public Utilities Commissioner giving a talk on Monday titled “Building Tomorrow's California: Broadband Highways and Environmental Leadership.” (Video of this address can be found on the CENIC 08 conference website, along with the other Keynote Addresses and many presentations.)

In her engaging address, Commissioner Chong considered the utility of government regulation in promoting broadband, where the market can be trusted to provide adequate penetration and where government regulation is needed, and the broad array of economic and social benefits, both current and projected, to the state thanks to broadband deployment, availability, and adoption.

Tuesday’s Keynote Speaker was Dan Bursch, the Naval Postgraduate School National Reconnaissance Office chair and former NASA Astronaut.

His talk, enhanced by many beautiful, high-resolution photographs, was titled “Expedition Four to the International Space Station: Collaboration off the planet” and examined the technological and even psychological aspects to collaborating across distances normally not spanned by fiber-optic cable, using examples of his own experiences on the Space Shuttle and during his tenure on board the International Space Station.

A dynamic and witty speaker, Bursch also related anecdotes about his time in orbit that alternately held the audience rapt and elicited laughter.

The Wednesday Keynote Address was equally fascinating, given by UC Santa Cruz’s Sandra Faber and titled “Piping the Light of the Cosmos Through Dark Fiber.” Her talk considered the vast quantity of data (by her projects, soon to equal an Exabyte) generated by professional and amateur astronomy, the problems associated with analyzing it, and the ways in which high-performance networking can mitigate them. In her talk, she shared with a wowed audience some of the most advanced (and unwieldy without cutting-edge networking, in terms of processing and file size) simulations of galactic formation, galactic collisions, and planetary behavior to date.

Like Chong’s address, both Bursch’s and Faber’s addresses are also available in MP4 format on the CENIC 08 conference website.

On March 10, after a day of fabulous general sessions presentations and breakout sessions on both teaching and learning and network technology and research, attendees to CENIC 08 were also treated to demonstrations on precisely the sorts of applications made possible by networks like CalREN and the difference they can make to people throughout the state and beyond. UCLA’s Joan Slottow, the Exploratorium’s Sherry Hsi, and San Diego State University’s Eric Frost shared with attendees in Exhibit Hall East achievements in media-enriched teaching and learning, grid computing, and emergency response.

Sherry Hsi presented the great media resources made available by the Exploratorium that can be used to enhance learning throughout the state and beyond, including lessons and demonstrations that students can use to gain hands-on experience with scientific ideas – and that teachers can use as well to present these ideas in an engaging, participatory manner.

Joan Slottow’s demonstration built on her presentation introducing attendees to the UCLA Grid Portal, which provides a single web interface to those computational clusters that have joined the UCLA Grid. Additionally, the UCLA Grid Portal can directly access some clusters outside of the UCLA Grid, including clusters on the TeraGrid.

Eric Frost’s presentation was riveting, concentrating as it did on an event of vivid importance to people throughout California: the 2007 wildfire season. Using stunning high-resolution photographs of the fires themselves, Frost was able to demonstrate how such information, properly used by emergency responders, could present an integrated, real-time model of such an emergency situation quite unlike any that first responders have been able to use before, transforming how such situations could be dealt with and enhancing understanding of how they develop.

National Networking News:

Google on Monday said it has a plan to have American consumers from Manhattan to rural North Dakota surfing the Web on handheld gadgets at gigabits-per-second speeds by the 2009 holiday season.

The company, joined by other heavyweights like Microsoft and Dell, has long been lobbying for the Federal Communications Commission to free up unused broadcast TV channels known as "white spaces" for unlicensed use by personal devices. That portion of the TV band is highly prized because it can propagate long distances and through obstacles.

FTTH is a hot topic already and it is only a matter of time before investors start realizing the true potential by launching special products or investment funds. The only trouble is, there are few FTTH pure plays in the public realm (unless you count any telco as such, because FTTH is the inescapable way forward). However, direct investments may come into play.

The Swedish Ventura Team recently reported on usage, which provided some reassurance to anybody displaying scepticism over what to do with all that bandwidth ...

“Hybrid courses,” or courses that deliver part of their instruction in a traditional lecture manner and part in an online environment, are becoming increasingly popular among schools and colleges. Proponents of the concept say it capitalizes on the benefits that both face-to-face and online learning can provide—and now, there is some evidence to suggest that hybrid courses can help students learn more effectively.

Many ed-tech advocates have voiced support for distance learning as a way for K-12 students to take courses not offered at their regular schools or enroll in courses for college credit. But another group of learners--adults who turn to distance learning to return or expand their schooling--is attracting more and more national attention.

Colleges and universities are examining the needs of adult distance learners as they develop online courses that meet the needs of not only 18-to-22-year-olds, but also those students who might have full-time jobs and family responsibilities.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today that it has formed an alliance with The Green Grid. The SNIA and its Green Storage Initiative (GSI) plan to work with The Green Grid in developing and promoting standards, measurement methods, processes and technologies to improve overall datacenter energy efficiencies.

"Tackling the challenges associated with energy efficiency and green computing will require collaboration across all areas of the IT industry," said Vincent Franceschini, chair of the SNIA. "Storage plays an important role in power and energy efficiency within datacenters and business computing ecosystems."

Jonathan Furness has a mobile blog that captures the daily life of Stepping Stones School in Hindhead, Surrey. Like regular blog spaces, Furness posts videos, pictures and ideas, only his version is all classroom related and the images are taken with a mobile phone.

One lesson Furness blogs about is his "tubeless siphon" experiment. He details what the experiment is based on -- a dyed pink polyethylene oxide solution -- and how the experiment was performed ...

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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