CENIC Today: Volume 9, Issue 10

Welcome to CENIC Today, the monthly newsletter of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California. In this issue:

CENIC News:

President's Message: The Governor's Executive Order and the New Broadband Task Force

This month, I'd like to return to a persistent theme of CENIC's: Broadband deployment is not only critical for advancing education and research but is also important for the economic health and welfare of society in general. I am pleased to report that the current California State administration has taken some bold steps to help increase broadband in California, via the issuance of a Governor's Executive Order and the establishment of a Broadband Task Force to assist the State both in removing barriers to further broadband deployment and in increasing broadband growth.

I participated in a teleconference last Friday in which the Order was reviewed and plans for broadband discussed. During this teleconference, I learned that the Governor's Order focuses on a number of important areas:

• Establishing a broadband task force to recommend additional steps the Governor can take to promote broadband access and usage,
• Designating one agency -- Business, Transportation & Housing (BT&H) -- as lead coordinator for implementing the state's broadband policy, to help ensure cohesion, speed, and efficiency,
• Directing BT&H to create a database linking private broadband companies with state transportation agencies, permitting companies to better coordinate fiber optic installation, leading to more consumer choice and efficient pricing,
• Establishing a pricing policy for private companies paying for "rights-of-way" access to state roads. Previously, charges to lay fiber varied widely; this order sets pricing based on actual costs incurred by the state,
• Calling for streamlined, expedited rights-of-way permitting procedures to accelerate broadband deployment,
• Directing BT&H to collect and analyze current broadband information so the state can accurately map existing resources,
• Directing the Department of General Services to make wireless Internet access available in State buildings and increase video streaming to deliver public meetings, training materials and other state resources online, and
• Directing state agencies to enable Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies for business and government use, and to include broadband conduit in their infrastructure planning.

These steps are very much in line with those advocated by CENIC over the last several years. I am pleased to see this initiative and have offered to help work with the Administration on this important Order, and I look forward to keeping you updated on the progress made towards broadband deployment for all of California in future issues of CENIC Today.

If you'd like to more information about this Executive Order, please visit http://www.cenic.org/pressroom/news/GOV_102706.html, where you will find the full text of the Order itself, the accompanying press release from the Office of the Governor, and CENIC's "One Gigabit or Bust" full and summary reports.

-- Jim Dolgonas, CENIC

Gov. Schwarzenegger, Superintendent O'Connell Help CENIC Celebrate the New Connectivity for Coachella Valley

On October 23, CENIC celebrated the connection of the rapidly-growing Coachella Valley area to CalREN, thanks to a grant from The H.N. & Frances C. Berger Foundation. The $3.4 million, 400-mile high-performance connection provides Desert educational institutions second-to-none technological capability and the ability to train hundreds of future teachers, nurses and entrepreneurs through distance learning.

The announcement was made during a press conference at the Palm Desert Campus of California State University San Bernardino. It included Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, both participating by videoconference, State Assemblymen Bill Emmerson (R-Redlands) and Russ Bogh (R-Beaumont), Palm Desert Mayor Jim Ferguson, other state local elected officials and representatives from CENIC, the California State University San Bernardino's Palm Desert Campus and UC Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center, as well as College of the Desert, the largest institution in the Palm Desert area in terms of student enrollment.

All of the institutions expressed their pleasure with their new connectivity as well as anticipation for advances for both themselves and the Coachella Valley as a whole. Governor Schwarzenegger was quick to applaud the fiber path now running through the area as an excellent example of education and research infrastructure that would render the Valley and the state better able to compete in the coming century, and local elected officials were delighted that such connectivity would enable their best and brightest to remain in the Coachella Valley while still pursuing their ambitions.

To learn more about this achievement for California's research and education community, visit http://www.cenic.org/PalmDesert/, where you'll find background information, CENIC's press release to mark the event, photos, and press coverage from The Riverside Press-Enterprise, The Desert Sun, and CBS 2. Video clips will be added shortly!

-- Janis Cortese, CENIC

CENIC and Pacific Wave Help Make CineGrid Demonstration at AES a Success for Letterman Digital Arts Center

For the first time anywhere, 2K and 4K resolution digital motion pictures and 24-channel digital audio were streamed from three different locations in real time using CineGrid., then mixed live for an audience of audio and video professionals at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco on October 8th.

CineGrid. is a virtual network for extreme media collaboration running on advanced research IP networks. CineGrid was one of the first major research projects at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a partnership between UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Overseen by Pacific Interface, joint CineGrid research between Calit2, the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content, Keio University (Keio/DMC), and the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (USC/SCA) laid the groundwork for the CineGrid@AES demonstrations.

2K images have roughly 2,000 horizontal pixels and 4K images have roughly 4,000. 4K offers approximately four times the resolution of the most widely used HD television format, and 24 times that of a standard broadcast TV signal. 2K and 4K are particularly significant new image formats because they will be widely used for future digital cinema theatrical distribution under new specifications proposed by Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC, a consortium of the major Hollywood studios.

Working with engineers from ILM and Skywalker Sound, the CineGrid team re-configured the LDAC Premier Theater, normally used to show traditional movies, to enable network delivery of up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) for real-time playback and control of 4K digital motion pictures and 24-channel digital audio from three remote sites: the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) division of Calit2; Keio/DMC in Tokyo; and USC/SCA in Los Angeles.

Jim Dolgonas, President and CEO of CENIC, which provided the network connectivity for this event in California over its California Research & Education Network (CalREN), said: "Using a new generation of cyberinfrastructure featuring multiple 10 Gigabit and 1 Gigabit lightpaths over optical fiber, we were able to extend CineGrid to the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco for the first time. CineGrid@AES and other ongoing CineGrid experiments are helping network operators better understand the requirements for large-scale digital media collaboration."

To read this press release in its entirety, visit http://www.cenic.org/pressroom/releases/2006/10252006.html. To learn more about the Audio Engineering Society, visit http://www.aes.org/.

-- Janis Cortese, CENIC

CENIC Signs Agreement with Open Student Television Network

During October, CENIC was pleased to sign an agreement with The Open Student Television Network (OSTN) to provide content to its Associates over CalREN.

Open Student Television Network (OSTN) is the only 24-hour global channel devoted exclusively to student-produced programming. It features a wide variety of programming genres ranging from soap operas like "Ivory Tower" from HRTV at Harvard University to dating shows like "Blind Date" from YTV at Yale University to talk shows like "CU@USC" from Trojan Vision at University of Southern California to reality shows like "Frosh Life" from Duke University to news shows like "Northwestern News Report" from Medill's School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

OSTN is delivered to more than 34 million users at 3,778 university member campuses and 36 countries in North America & Europe and can be viewed on both TVs and PCs.

On OSTN, students are not only creating content but they are also making the important programming decisions that appeal to their peer viewing audience. OSTN provides opportunities for students through resources, community, exposure and experience.

To learn more, visit the OSTN at http://www.ostn.tv/.

-- Janis Cortese, CENIC

CalREN Update: Network Projects and Activities

Once again, it's been a busy month for CENIC and CalREN, particularly regards the Campus Access Infrastructure Initiative (CAI), which seeks to provide all Cal State University campuses with diverse Gigabit connectivity to the CalREN backbone. Two Gigabit fiber connections to CalREN have been lit for Sacramento State University; all equipment and infrastructure is in place, and the fiber paths are ready for the software testing necessary to begin providing the campus with state-of-the-art connectivity to CalREN's optical backbone at the Sacramento hub site.

The California State University Chancellor's Office at the WestEd facility located in Los Alamitos received a Gigabit Ethernet connection to the Los Angeles hub site this month. Their existing DS-3 connectivity to the Tustin hub site has remained in order to provide diverse connectivity to CalREN.

In last month's CENIC Today, we also reported that the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, CA had received the first of its diverse, CENIC-managed fiber connections to CalREN. Their first connection to the Oakland backbone site was made operational on September 9, and we're pleased to announce that their second connection to the Sacramento node was completed during October.

The Campus Access Infrastructure Initiative (CAI) is a crucial part of providing the CSU with robust, high-performance networking that can help the campuses meet the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. As a result of this initiative, CSU campuses with diverse, dual connections to the CalREN backbone do not typically experience outages when a connection goes down for reasons external to the campus. Without this Initiative, campuses outages for the CSU could have totalled as much as 10,099 minutes, a clear illustration of the importance of robust, diverse connectivity.

-- Ed Smith, CENIC

CUDI & redCLARA Join Pacific Wave

In last month's CENIC Today, we reported that the Kiwi Advanced Research & Education Network (KAREN) connected to Pacific Wave, joining the premiere research and education networks throughout the Pacific Rim.

This month, KAREN and the many other networks involved in Pacific Wave were joined by the Mexican research and education network, CUDI (Corporación para el Desarrollo de Internet) and the Central and South American research networks redCLARA (Cooperación Latino-Americana de Redes Avanzadas). Both networks completed 1 Gigabit connections to Pacific Wave in Los Angeles and can now share data directly with any of the 26 advanced networks using Pacific Wave.

Pacific Wave is a state-of-the-art international peering exchange facility designed to serve research & education networks throughout the Pacific Rim and the world. Pacific Wave enhances research and education network capabilities by increasing network efficiency, reducing latency, increasing throughput, and reducing costs. Pacific Wave is a joint project between CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and is operated in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington.

Today, Pacific Wave is available at three U.S. Pacific coast locations: the Bay Area (Sunnyvale and Palo Alto), Los Angeles (3 sites), and Seattle.

For a complete list of all Pacific Wave participants, visit http://www.pacificwave.net/participants/current/. For more information on CUDI and redCLARA, visit http://www.cudi.edu.mx/ and http://www.redclara.net/.

-- Janis Cortese, CENIC

CENIC `07: Making Waves -- Online Registration Opens November 1st

Starting November 1, 2006, attendees will be able to register for CENIC `07: Making Waves online. Register before December 31, 2006 for a free conference t-shirt! Prices are as follows:

		Govt/Nonprof/Acad	Corporate	Student
3-Day Pass: 	$300			$400		$150
2-Day Pass:	$250			$350		$100
1-Day Pass:	$200			$300		$50
	

Speakers pay a flat fee of $150 and and are invited to attend for the full three days of the conference as well as the evening welcome reception at 5:30pm Sunday, March 11.

The CENIC 2007 Program Committee is seeking presentations, demonstrations, and panel discussions focused on network-enabled applications and research related to the 2007 conference theme, Making Waves.

We are planning for sessions that cover technology and infrastructure, teaching and learning, application development and use, trends, and/or future developments in network technology and related applications. Presentations focused on research, teaching and learning activities involving multiple segments of the K-20 community, and/or international collaborations are encouraged. Projects or studies to be featured may be works-in-progress. The conference venue will be connected to CalREN, NLR, and Internet2 to enable live demonstrations of content or capability.

Past topics have included optical networking, teragrid computing, network security, implementing IPv6, end-to-end connectivity, quality of service, last mile solutions, wireless technology, collaborative music and dance, and collaborative medicine.

CENIC is still accepting proposals, so be sure to visit http://cenic07.cenic.org/cfp.html and learn more about how you can become a presenter at CENIC `07: Making Waves and showcase how CalREN has enabled you to achieve your research and education goals.

As noted previously, CENIC `07: Making Waves will be held from March 12-14, 2007 at:

The San Diego La Jolla Marriott Hotel
4240 La Jolla Village Drive
La Jolla, CA 92037
(858) 587-1414

including an evening reception on Sunday, March 11, 2007. You can reserve your room to take part in Making Waves by visiting the CENIC `07: Making Waves website at http://cenic07.cenic.org/ or clicking on the following:

http://marriott.com/property/propertypage/SANLJ?groupCode=cencena&app=resvlink

CENIC would also like to thank Titanium Level Sponsor Cisco Systems, Platinum Level Sponsor AT&T, and Silver Level Sponsors Verizon and Juniper Networks for their generous assistance in making CENIC `07: Making Waves possible.

Looking forward to seeing you in La Jolla in March 2007!

-- Sharleen Kim, CENIC

National Networking News:

Larry Smarr Discusses Importance of Optical Networking for Metagenomics

"There's a revolution going on in cyberinfrastructure," said Calit2 director Larry Smarr, "to handle the vast increase in the quantity and types of data arising from metagenomics. We'll use that to build a global metagenomics community." Smarr, as the first speaker on today's agenda of Metagenomics 2006, addressed some 130 attendees, nearly double that of the attendance from the day before.

Smarr referred back to the beginnings of the shared Internet in 1985 when the National Science Foundation adopted the protocols of NSFnet's predecessor, ARPANET. NSFnet was the backbone among the five supercomputer centers, then it was extended to the regional, then campus networks. It's good for e-mail and web browsing, of course. "But we're in a period in networking comparable to the days of computer mainframes and card decks in computing, which many of you may be too young to remember, when the PC came out.

"We had to compute with everyone sharing a mainframe that had to be kept running at up to 95% capacity. Because we were all competing for the same resource, we each got a small fraction of the total and couldn't tell when our respective jobs would complete. Then the personal computer emerged, which was yours alone. With only your job on the computer, turnaround became predictable and much faster. Today we all share the same Internet, so every time you download a file, it takes an unpredictable amount of time. Even though the optical-fiber backbone is 10,000 megabits per second, an individual user will typically see tens of megabits per second. What you would like is a personal lightpath that gives you the full 10 gigabits per second, so it is predictable and allows you to interact visually with very large remote scientific datasets."

Source: http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/article.php?id=948

National LambdaRail President Tom West Explains Research Focus

[NLR President Tom West] has been asked: Why is National LamdbaRail (NLR) focusing so much on facilitating network research and "big" science applications as its core mission? Is it not as important to give equal or greater attention to the networking needs of the broader research and education (R&E) community?

His reply begins:

"In answering these questions, permit me to draw a comparison to the historical development and evolution of the great cities around the world.

"When investing in real estate today, you are told that the principle focus should be on Location! Location! Location! The root of this principle is evident in the development and evolution of the major cities and regions around the globe. In most instances, the selection of the location for each of these cities was based on such strategic factors as: safety and security; access to basic necessities and resources; transportation; and, the potential to develop commerce. As each city's core developed and prospered, the community grew and expanded geographically. Over time, each great city not only evolves, but also periodically reinvents its core in order to stay vibrant and respond to the changing needs of the society. The cycle, never ending, continues to repeat itself as new needs drive evolutions."

To read more, visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/978148.html.

UC Berkeley To Put Lectures on Google Video

The University of California at Berkeley said last week that it will use Google Video to deliver college courses, including lectures and symposia, free of charge. It will be the first university to have its own featured page on Google Video, according to a report by the Reuters News Agency. As an initial offering, the university has put up a library of more than 250 hours of video for public viewing. Most of it previously was not available online, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

Currently there are a half-dozen Berkeley courses in their entirety on the site, including 'Physics for Future Presidents,' 'Integrative Biology,' and 'Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business,' featuring a lecture by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Also available will be a range of public events and academic symposia on topics ranging from climate change to synthetic biology. The campus is set to add more material to the Google Video site in coming months

To learn more, visit http://video.google.com/ucberkeley.html.

Desire2Learn Strikes Back at Blackboard

Desire2Learn has filed a response to Blackboard.s infringement suit. They claim that the patent is invalid because Blackboard knowingly refrained from disclosing relevant prior art (including software they had purchased such as Prometheus and previous standards work done through the IMS).

The company basically calls for that immediate dismissal, payment of their legal fees by Blackboard, and also opens the door for possible punitive damages

Source: http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/USCOURTS/T060914A.pdf

October Issue of Globus Consortium Journal is Now Live

Highlights for this month's issue include:

• GlobusWORLD joined forces with IDG World Expo and GGF to present GridWorld 2006 last month. Here's a look back on some of the press highlights from that event.
• In this reprint from GRIDtoday, Wolfgang Gentzsch gives us a synopsis of the early regional, national and community Grid initiatives that were built around the Globus Toolkit.
• Natalia Maltsev and Dinanath Sulakhe provide us with insight on the use of Grid in computational biology, their Grid projects, and what's in store for the future.
• Ravi Subramaniam, principal engineer in Intel's Digital Enterprise Group and Grid veteran, talks about his strategy for defining how Intel's products can deliver "industry leading" value with technologies that include Grid.
• In the aerospace industry where product lifecycles are lengthy and customers are operating under extreme cost pressures, maximizing profitability for each product is critical. Vas Vasiliadis, VP of Marketing & Product Management for Univa illustrates how Grid can be an enabler for the level of innovation required by the aerospace industry.

To read the October issue of the Globus Consortium Journal and learn more about these projects and others, visit http://www.globusconsortium.org/journal.

Gates Foundation Donates $1.8 Million to Los Angeles Charter Group

Green Dot Public Schools announced a $1.8 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support five new charter schools. Located in LAUSD.s Jefferson High School attendance area, these new schools double the number of Green Dot.s high schools to ten. The new investment will allow Green Dot to continue creating schools focused on increasing graduation rates and prepare more Los Angeles students for success in college and careers.

The new schools were born out of the Jefferson Transformation Plan, a Green Dot-led, community-based initiative founded upon a groundbreaking strategy to restructure low-performing high schools into small, safe schools designed to increase student achievement as well as parent, educator and community participation.

Source: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/UnitedStates/Education/TransformingHighSchools/Schools/Announcements/Announce-060919.htm

Senators Introduce Bill to Create Controversial Student Tracking Database

Fourteen U.S. senators formally introduced a bill today to authorize spending to set up databases to track college students' educational progress -- an idea opposed by private colleges -- and to produce more scientists and engineers.

The bill, S 3936, is not expected to come up for a vote this week on the Senate floor, however, because lawmakers are scrambling to complete work on a bevy of higher-profile bills dealing with national security. Congress recesses at the end of this week so members can campaign for the November elections. A lame-duck session is expected in November, but it is unclear which bills lawmakers might consider, other than must-pass appropriations measures to run the federal government. However, the co-sponsors of today's bill include the Senate's two leaders: the majority leader, Sen. Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, and the minority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Source: http://chronicle.com/news/article/1041/senators-introduce-bill-to-create-controversial-student-tracking-database

Storing Lots of Classroom Content at Fitchberg State

Most of today's splashiest new classroom technologies have at least one thing in common -- they tend to require lots of storage space on the campus network. Audio/video presentations, the use of document cameras, and podcasting, for example, all call for large amounts of file space, both for storing the initial content, and for backup purposes.

At Fitchburg State College, a relatively small state college about 50 miles west of Boston, CIO Charlie Maner has dealt with the classroom content storage issue through a new iSCSI storage area network (SAN). The new system serves as the infrastructure for all campus technology projects, including Fitchburg's aggressive podcasting initiative.

Source: http://campustechnology.com/news_article.asp?id=19392&typeid=156

How Ready is Ready? Katrina was a wake-up call for more than the Gulf Coast schools

It is little more than a year ago that the US higher education community faced a rude awakening in the form of Hurricane Katrina. As levees ruptured, winds raged, and flood levels rose, college and university CIOs and administrators discovered how quickly a campus can lose all access to telephone and cell phone communication, computers, and data. In such a disaster, students and faculty may be scattered locally or regionally with no way of contacting one another, communicating their status, or knowing if the campus is safe or imperiled. E-mail and websites may be down, and phones may be inoperable. Communication among administration, faculty, students, and their families can be lost in a heartbeat, just when the need for a source of reliable information is greatest. And administrative computing resources can come to an abrupt halt, meaning no expediting of services, no payrolls, bills paid, or accounts received. Katrina proved it could happen. Now, a year later, how are schools preparing for the possibility of other catastrophic events?

The first step in disaster planning is, of course, to acknowledge the possibility of a disaster. New Orleans will always be vulnerable to hurricanes, so Xavier University (LA) must prepare to be hit again. Yet, on the other side of the country in California, where earthquakes are a likely occurrence (and recent press coverage points to acknowledgement that California may be unprepared for an anticipated, sizable event), what have the University of Southern California and the University of California-Berkeley done to prepare for potential disaster?

Source: http://www.campustechnology.com/article.asp?id=19305

Telepresence Adds Realism to Videoconferencing

Cisco Systems has launched new technology that aims to be so realistic as to make video-conference participants believe the person talking on the monitor is actually in the same room. Called "telepresence," the technology is intended to eliminate the detached feel of traditional video conferences. Though it's likely too expensive for most schools to consider at least initially, industry watchers say it could have implications for schools down the road as the cost of the technology falls.

Source: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6661

Next E-rate Filing Windows Opens November 14

Schools and libraries hoping to receive funding next year under the $2.25 billion-a-year eRate will have from Nov. 14 to Feb. 7 to submit their applications.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the government entity responsible for the telecommunications program, announced the dates of the filing window on Oct. 19, the same day it released its annual Eligible Services List (ESL), the official roster of technologies and services that qualify for eRate discounts.

In its announcement, the FCC authorized the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC), the third-party operator that oversees the eRate for the federal government, to open the filing window next month, waiving a provision that would have kept the window closed for at least 60 days following the release of the new ESL. Program administrators say the move, which the FCC also made last year, is intended to get the money flowing to applicants sooner rather than later.

Source: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6660

About CENIC:

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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