CENIC News

With over 100 Nobel laureates calling California home, and with Canada ranking first among the G-7 nations in terms of research publications, a partnership between the two would be sure to benefit them and the world -- and that partnership already exists. Called the Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership, or CCSIP, it seeks to catalyze collaborative research, development, and delivery (RD&D) between California and Canada by bringing together the best minds and innovation resources from California and Canada, stimulating new models for collaboration, and providing leadership on the sustainability challenges facing our planet today.

Thus far, the CCSIP had held three summits to bring together some of the best leaders and researchers in these areas. The first of those was held in January 2006 at UCLA and the second in June 2006 in Vancouver.

On October 27, 2008, the third summit was held in Montréal, Québec, and I wanted to share with you my some of experiences attending that meeting. The meeting itself was conducted primarily as a series of six parallel workshop tracks concentrating on the following issues and challenges:

• Carbon Capture and Sequestration,
• Green IT and Zero-Carbon Infrastructure,
• Infectious Diseases,
• Next-Generation Digital Media,
• Sustainable Biofuels, and
• Cross-border Intellectual Property

The University of California was extremely strongly represented on all the workshop tracks. I was delighted to accept an invitation to participate in the Green IT workshop, and found some of the information discussed during the session quite striking. Two such pieces of information are that:

• California is the 12th largest source of carbon dioxide, and
• climate change is occurring more rapidly than earlier projections had shown.

These facts are sobering and a clear call to action for CENIC and the CENIC community, but any action will not consist of a "magic pill" solution. For example, during the conference there was reference to a zero-carbon data center being planned by one organization. Unfortunately, follow-up revealed that the group was only in the early planning phases of a new -- and non-zero-carbon -- data center.  Clearly, simple solutions elude us, and we all must ready ourselves for a complex and multifaceted solution to this equally complex problem facing us all.

However, we are beginning discussions with a cross-segmental group of CENIC members about shared collocation or data centers, which could distribute any carbon footprint savings through a large community and thus create an even greater carbon savings. One example of how such shared data centers can help is by locating them in sites where cooling demands are reduced. This could help many institutions reduce their own cooling demands, and high-performance networking like that provided by CalREN can play a major role in helping support remote/virtual computing facilities.

CENIC is looking forward to playing an important role in helping the California research and education community deal with the challenge of global warming.  As any plans are developed in this regard, we will be pleased share them with our community.

Readers of CENIC Today are aware that a very large number of K-12 SONET circuits have been undergoing Gigabit upgrades to improve their connectivity to the CalREN backbone. Last month six circuits were announced, and during the month of October, these latest enhancements were joined by four more for the K-12 community as the following circuits were upgraded to Gigabit bandwidth: the Placer County Office of Education's connection to the Sacramento CalREN backbone node, two connections for the Yolo COE -- to the Sacramento backbone node and to the California Department of Education, and the connection between the Nevada Joint Union High School District (located in Grass Valley, CA) and the Sacramento backbone node.

Three connections were also announced last month for California's Community Colleges, and they are now joined by a Gigabit connection between Foothill College (serving some 18,000 students and part of the Foothill-DeAnza CCD) and the Oakland CalREN backbone node, as well as Gigabit connections between the Los Angeles CCD office and the Tustin backbone node and the San Jose Evergreen CCD office and the Oakland backbone node.

In other news, CENIC has also filed a form 470 and accompanying Circuit RFP for various K-12 circuits; interested parties can view this RFP on the the CENIC website.

Great news for anyone seeking to submit a proposal for RIDING THE WAVES OF INNOVATION -- the deadline for anyone seeking to submit in response to the Call for Proposals has been extended to November 7th! We've already gotten some great ideas, and we'd love to have you participate and share with the larger California research and education community how you've been putting high-performance networking to use.

If you'd like to submit a proposal for a presentation, we are interested in presentations that cover technology and infrastructure, teaching and learning, application development and use, trends, and/or future developments in network technology and related applications. The conference venue will be connected at 1 Gigabit to CalREN, NLR, and Internet2 to enable live demonstrations of content or capability. Information about past presentations can be obtained by reviewing the CENIC 2007 and CENIC 2008 conference programs.

We are especially interested in presentations that involve:

• Collaboration across educational segments, or with non-profit or research entities
• Use of national and international networks
• Teaching and Learning applications and projects
• Green initiatives and Sustainability
• Real-time demonstrations with remote sites
• Advanced services or technologies
• Use of new and emerging technologies

Take a look at the Call for Proposals online to find out how to participate.

That's not the only deadline approaching, though -- the Call for Award Nominations deadline is also November 7th. If you're interested in submitting an application or project for consideration for the Innovations in Networking Awards for 2009, the awards will be given for innovations in the following four categories:

• Teaching and Learning Applications
• High-Performance Research Applications
• Experimental/Developmental Applications
• Gigabit/Broadband Applications

Applications and projects involving collaborative work, either across multiple segments of the K-20 community or across county, state, or national borders, are encouraged. A committee of judges from within the CalREN community will determine the award winners on the basis of submitted materials, and additional interviews as deemed necessary. Previous award-winners can be found at the websites for the 2008 and 2007 Annual Conferences to give you an idea of the sort of project that stands out as an example of innovative network use.

That's not the only news about the CENIC Annual Conference, though. On this coming Monday, November 3, online registration opens for RIDING THE WAVES OF INNOVATION, and your payment options are as flexible and convenient as ever -- plus, you'll be given the option to view the up-to-date Attendee List online as many times as you wish using your provided Registration ID.

Visit the Registration page to take a look at your payment options and information about Attendance Fees so your institution can start budgeting for your trip to Long Beach today.

You'll also find hotel information and learn how your organization can sponsor RIDING THE WAVES OF INNOVATION.

With the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Caltech high-energy physics researcher Harvey Newman's professional life has gotten even more busy than before, but he never loses sight of the fact that the networks over which the flood of data that will be generated don't just connect massive machines but people -- specifically teachers and students.

They also have the power to turn one into the other.

"We can't spend too much time making bandwidth predictions," Newman says. "Limiting ourselves to bandwidth predictions limits the future based on past performance. The network is the community itself. This technology can really affect universities and students, make it easier to teach to the best of the best students, and erase the boundaries between teachers and students."

That's not to say that bandwidth predictions aren't part of networking innovation, and Newman speculates that as 10 Gigabit links become today's norm, 40 Gigabit and higher links as a matter of course are coming much more quickly than anyone might imagine -- which will certainly improve the effectiveness of instruments like the LHC, in which the entire world's research and education community has a significant interest. And in order to ensure that the world's research and education networks can keep up with the demands -- and the imagination -- of that community, the community itself must own the process.

"NSF grants require educational relevance, and networking technology can transform the educational process, enabling students to mentor one another," Newman adds. "In fact, it must if it is to get NSF funding." As much as high-performance networking can create laboratories and collaborations that span the globe, it can also completely redefine the traditional research-oriented classroom. If tomorrow's networking is to serve the needs of the most demanding research applications, it must do so in order to create a new generation of students prepared to take the reins of such research and pass the torch to the future themselves.

If you visit the premiere international conference for high-performance networking, computing, storage, and analysis -- SC08, of course -- be sure to stop by Booth #568, listed as the San Diego Supercomputing Center on the SC08 floorplan, where you'll find CENIC sharing the floor with the SDSC and other distinguished members of the CENIC Associate community.

The booth will feature demonstrations and presentations by CENIC representatives and others, so stop by, ask questions, and make sure to learn more about how the high-performance networking provided by CalREN enables the world's most innovative research.

US & World Networking News:

In one of the first efforts of its kind, universities in Canada and California are pledging to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their campuses while developing so-called "green cyberinfrastructure" -- information technology that improves energy efficiency and reduces the impact of emissions on climate change.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed October 20, 2008 by the University of British Columbia (UBC), the University of California, San Diego -- both sustainability leaders -- and Prompt Inc., a non-profit corporation that fosters research and development, building university-industry partnerships to increase the competitiveness of Québec's information and communications technology (ICT) sector.

The 8th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop was held on 1-2 October 2008 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, WA. This was the second time that the global optical networking community has converged on the United States, and the event hosted by the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, Pacific Wave and the University of Washington attracted more than 130 participants from four continents. These included managers, engineers, researchers and developers from national research and education networks (NRENs), universities, research institutions and industry.

Online learning is growing rapidly, but its continued growth will require specific policy and funding changes that focus on increasing educational choices and opportunities while ensuring high quality and improved student achievement, according to a new report.

"Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning," the fifth in an annual series of reports examining the online-learning landscape, debuted at the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL)'s Virtual School Symposium on Oct. 27.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego today announced plans for a unique facility called the Triton Resource, a high-impact, massive data analysis and storage system that will accelerate innovation, collaboration, and discovery through the use of leading-edge research cyberinfrastructure at SDSC.

The state of California has partnered with SunEdison to provide affordable solar power at 15 California State University campuses and the CSU executive office.

Under the power purchase agreement signed Monday, SunEdison will finance, build and operate the solar panels for 20 years. California State University will be able to buy the renewable power they generate at or below current retail rates while avoiding the cost of installing the system.

Creating a green school involves more than buildings. Green schools can offer students a living laboratory for learning about the environment. Green building, renewable energy, water conservation, healthy design and other green concepts are becoming central to our culture -- and to the economy.

To the extent that teachers are able to perceive and take advantage of green learning opportunities, their students will be better prepared for the world that is waiting for them after graduation.

If you want to be part of this evolution, you need to attend the Teacher Training Institute on December 8, 2008 in Anaheim, CA featuring State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell as Keynote Speaker.

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.