CENIC Today: Volume 9, Issue 11

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

CENIC News:

President's Message: Cyberinfrastructure and Global Innovation

California's schools, colleges, and universities are often at the forefront of national and global research innovation, and CENIC is proud to enable this through providing these institutions with the advantages of cutting-edge networking that accompany connectivity to CalREN. The positive effects of access to advanced networking don't stop at the classroom, though; a clear Gigabit path from any classroom or laboratory in California to anywhere else in the world enables collaboration and innovation on a previously unforeseen scale. CENIC takes the position that this ability and the networking tools and applications that make it possible will keep California and the United States competitive in the global arena.

Recently, these same sentiments were expressed by director of the National Science Foundation Arden L. Bement, Jr. in a speech given on November 15 to college leaders at the Chronicle of Higher Education Forum. The speech was titled "Cyberinfrastructure: The Second Revolution" and focused on the need for a better set of shared high-speed networking tools and protocols for research which would maintain the United States. leadership position in technology and higher education.

All of the hardware and software tools needed to ensure the continued preeminence of the Unites States in research were grouped together under the label of cyberinfrastructure. "To be even more provocative," Bement stated, "I would suggest that leadership in cyberinfrastructure may determine America's continued ability to innovate -- and thus, our ability to compete successfully in the global arena."

Bement's speech specifically mentioned the use of such tools to enable the sharing of scientific instruments (eg. collaboratories) and high-speed computing power over great distances (grid computing). Other tools considered by Bement to be of particular interest included better simulation methods and better ways to represent and share data graphically in order to reveal increasing levels of complexity to researchers.

Collaboration across boundaries between both nations and disciplines was also mentioned as deserving of special consideration in the development of higher education's research projects.

It's worth noting that many of these innovations are currently taking place thanks to our Associates and CalREN, including Calit2's OptIPuter, which resides at the cutting edge of all of the above areas of interest. A perfect example of a collaboratory inviting international cooperation is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS), which will allow scientists to perform long-term and real-time experiments 900 meters below the surface of Monterey Bay and will serve as an engineering, science, and education test bed for even larger regional ocean observatories. Crucial networking and computing tools comprise the MonALISA network services package developed by an international team of researchers in Caltech and the Universitatea Politehnica of Bucharest, one of the winners of CENIC's 2006 Innovations in Networking Award.

Bement further stated that cyberinfrastructure went beyond the networking tools themselves but also comprised new "norms of practice and rules, incentives, and constraints that shape individual and collective actions." CENIC's stated mission is to enable the California research and education community to play its crucial part in creating this new age of computing, what Bement called "The Second Revolution," and we're eager to celebrate and promote the achievements of CENIC's Associates to that end.

-- Jim Dolgonas, CENIC

CalREN Update: Network Projects and Activities

At the end of the 2006 calendar year, we can report that CENIC has finished the year with significant activity in California's schools and universities.

CENIC installed circuit upgrades to three K-12 node sites this past month. The largest school district in the state, Los Angeles Unified School District, recently put their new Gigabit connection to CalREN-DC into production. CENIC also installed a Gigabit connection to the Orange County Department of Education and upgraded the connection into the Tulare County Office of Education from a DS-3 to an OC-3 circuit. The next K-12 site slated to receive a Gigabit connection is the Sacramento County Office of Education.

CENIC is also delighted to welcome two new private universities to the CalREN family. Both the University of San Francisco and the University of San Diego now enjoy all the benefits of Gigabit connections to the CalREN-DC network. We look forward to seeing what advances will follow in the ways in which they meet the needs of their communities, and the ways in which those communities interact with California and the world.

CENIC also provided several California State University campuses new connectivity thanks to the Campus Access Infrastructure Initiative (CAI), which seeks to provide all Cal State University campuses with diverse Gigabit connectivity to the CalREN backbone. As part of this initiative, the California Maritime Academy's second Gigabit connection over CENIC-managed fiber was put into production, completing their dual Gigabit connectivity. CSU Channel Islands' new Gigabit service was also delivered and tested, and the campus is using its new connection to CalREN.

CENIC has also completed a major milestone in achieving dual, diverse, Gigabit connectivity to CalREN for CSU's East Bay campus. We delivered and tested two new CENIC-managed fiber connections -- one to our Sunnyvale hub site and the other to our Oakland hub site. Both new connections are expected to be put into production during the month of December. CSU Monterey Bay's dual, diverse connectivity has also passed a significant milestone -- new fiber connections were lit and tested this month, and CENIC engineers are currently working with campus staff to put the new connections into production.

Lastly, Sacramento State's new CENIC-managed fiber connections have been successfully tested, and CENIC engineers are now working with the campus to enable them to use their new Gigabit connections to CalREN.

This past calendar year has been a time of significant activity, improvement, and advance for both CalREN and for our Associates, and we look forward to reporting even more successes in 2007!

-- Ed Smith, CENIC

CENIC Helps Make SC06 Network a Reality in Tampa Convention Center

The slogan for this year's SC06 conference, which took place from November 11-17, 2006 in Tampa, FL, was "Powerful Beyond Imagination" and referred to a quote from Albert Einstein, in which he described the combination of computers and the human mind thus. Attendees to the recent conference were able to see for themselves just how powerful this combination can be during six days of programming that showcased advances in systems hardware and software, networking, storage, instruments, sensors, grids, and web services. Also featured in the SC06 program were novel applications of these technologies to problems of interest to science, engineering, business, and society. The conference included prizes and competitions as well as demos and exhibits that illustrated what can be achieved by the human/supercomputer combination.

And naturally, a supercomputing conference required a super network to support these activities as well as the 24/7 networking needs of some 7,100 attendees for its six-day duration. Roughly 140 volunteers from organizations around the nation contributed their time and expertise to the network built to support SC06, called SCinet, as well as dozens of companies whose equipment comprised SCinet. The end result was a network supported by volunteers taken from the world's best and brightest and that boasted ten 10-Gigabit network connections to the Tampa Convention Center.

CENIC was among these organizations, along with Level3, Qwest, FLR, University of Florida, University of West Florida, Florida State University, Florida International University, University of South Florida, University of Wisconsin, NLR, Abilene, ESnet, Atlantic Wave, UltraLight, Verizon, Cisco, Spirent, Nortel and Ciena. Via the Layer 1 support provided by the CENIC Network Operations Center, CENIC deployed three 10-Gigabit Ethernet circuits across the NLR footprint to support the extension of NLR's FrameNet Layer 2 service and NLR's PacketNet Layer 3 service into Florida. These 10-Gigabit circuits were then carried by Florida LambdaRail through their optical network to Tampa, FL.

CENIC also assisted Florida LambdaRail with the deployment and support of the optical metro systems that extended circuits from the Level 3 and Qwest telco facilities in Tampa to the Tampa Convention Center and the over seven thousand attendees, presenters, and other guests at SC06.

-- Janis Cortese, CENIC

CENIC `07: Making Waves -- Online Registration Open, Call for Awards

Attendees for CENIC `07: Making Waves have already begun to register online for the conference, which will take place in La Jolla, CA from March 12-14, 2007. You can register and reserve your hotel room as well by visiting http://cenic07.cenic.org/. 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 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.

Innovations in Networking 2007: Call for Awards:

During its annual conference, CENIC seeks to highlight network applications and projects by identifying exemplary innovations that leverage the network and have the potential to improve the way instruction and research is conducted, even when the impact of the innovation may not be felt immediately.

To that end, CENIC is seeking nominations from CalREN participants for the most innovative uses of the network in 2006. Awards will be given for innovations in the following four categories:

• Education Applications
• High Performance Research Applications
• Experimental/Developmental Applications
• Gigabit/Broadband Applications

Applications and projects focused on research, teaching and learning activities involving multiple segments of the K-20 community and/or international collaborations that have been developed within 2005-2006 are encouraged.

A committee of distinguished academicians and leaders in the field of networking and education will determine the award winners on the basis of submitted materials, and additional interviews if necessary.

CENIC will present the awards during Making Waves. Award winners will also be given the opportunity to present and discuss their application in a special session at the conference. You can learn more by visiting http://cenic07.cenic.org/!

Nomination Procedure:

The deadline for submission of nominations is January 31, 2007 by 5:00 pm. Nominations may be submitted via e-mail to cenic2007@lists.cenic.org.

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, Juniper Networks, and ADVA Optical Networking 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:

Forging a Digital World One City at a Time: Joaquin Alvarado

Joaquin Alvarado might not be the only indie filmmaker-turned-Internet ambassador, but he may be the most ambitious.

Alvarado, 33, is founding director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University. The project aims to build commercial applications for high-speed fiber networks, which can be 500 to 600 times faster than standard broadband. He's also founder of the Digital Sister Cities Initiative, a program to connect cities around the world with the goal of promoting economic development through advanced technologies and those high-speed fiber networks.

From his background as a graduate of the UCLA film school, it's not obvious how Alvarado might have come to these roles. But to hear him tell it, his epiphany came while he was a starving indie filmmaker in the early '90s, toting a "lowball, flea-market mentality and high moral standards."

Source: http://news.com.com/2008-1028_3-6131795.html?part=rss&tag=6131795&subj=news

Web Tech Splices Filmmakers' Global Divide

Behind the making of the upcoming animated film Happy Feet is a tale of two film producers struggling to work together from different continents.

Like most global team efforts, the story features off-hour conference calls and a lot of email trickling in overnight. But for a small digital-effects house like San Francisco's Giant Killer Robots, it also meant sending large, bandwidth-hogging digital video files to the director's company, Animal Logic, in Sydney, Australia.

That's not an easy task when you're a little company that can't afford fibre optic lines into the office. But if an innovative joint university-government project works out, global filmmaking teams like the one behind Happy Feet -- due in US cinemas 17 November -- could have an easier time getting their jobs done.

Source: http://news.cnet.co.uk/networking/0,39029686,49284927,00.htm

EDUCAUSE to Blackboard: "Intense Anger" on Lawsuit

EDUCAUSE president Brian Hawkins said a patent infringement lawsuit by campus systems vendor Blackboard Inc. against Desire2Learn, a developer of Web-based learning apps, "go beyond competition to challenging the core values and interest in higher education."

In a letter to Blackboard chief executive officer Michael Chasen, Hawkins said he was speaking on behalf of the "higher education IT community." EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association of higher education institutions. Earlier this year, Blackboard was awarded a patent for intellectual property within its course management system and then filed a lawsuit against Desire2Learn for infringement of the patent.

Source: http://campustechnology.com/news_article.asp?id=19570&typeid=150

FiberCo Announces Professional Services For Research And Higher Education Community

FiberCo, a fiber holding company formed by Internet2 to support dark fiber initiatives for U.S. research and higher education, today announced that it has teamed with Level 3 Communications to offer a new suite of customized professional services to assist universities and regional networks with efficiently planning, installing, managing and operating their advanced network infrastructures. Called FiberCo Professional Services, this highly anticipated offering is designed to meet the growing need among the research and education community for support in developing and operating carrier-class networks that can reliably sustain next-generation network applications and services.

Since its inception, FiberCo Professional Services has already engaged with University of Arkansas and University of Nebraska to assist in the development and deployment of their regional optical networks.

Source: https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/i2-news

NEC Launches Education Rewards Program

NEC Corporation of America is launching a new rewards program called NEC Star Student. This program helps educational institutions acquire visual displays needed to share information and move students to new levels of discovery without straining the university.s budget.

NEC Star Student is a program specifically designed for education. All public or private, accredited, not-for-profit educational institutions involved in K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and home schools with vocational and technical instruction or administration in the U.S. or Canada are eligible for NEC Star Student.

To learn more, please visit http://www.necstarstudent.com/.

Atlantic Wave Peering Project Improves International Research Collaboration

The Atlantic Wave service, officially launched by the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and a group of collaborating not-for-profit organizations, is a distributed international research network exchange and peering facility along the Atlantic coast of North and South America. The main goal of Atlantic Wave is to facilitate research and education (R&E) collaborations between U.S. and Latin American institutions.

Atlantic Wave will provide R&E network exchange and peering services for existing networks that interconnect at key exchange points along the Atlantic Coast of North and South America, including MAN LAN in New York City, MAX GigaPOP and NGIX-East in Washington D.C., SoX GigaPOP in Atlanta, AMPATH in Miami, and the São Paulo, Brazil exchange point operated by the Academic Network of São Paulo (ANSP). Atlantic Wave supports the GLIF (Global Lambda Integrated Facility) Open Lightpath Exchange (GOLE) model.

Also, the new Atlantic Wave high performance digital communications service has been interconnected with two additional international networking facilities ­ CA*net 4 and StarLight ­ to complete linking up the North American international exchange points. Atlantic Wave, officially launched by the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and a group of collaborating not-for-profit organizations, is a 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) distributed international research network exchange and peering facility along the Atlantic coast of North and South America. The main goal of Atlantic Wave is to facilitate research and education (R&E) collaborations between U.S. and Latin American institutions.

CA*net 4, Canada's advanced national research and education network, with facilities in the US, has established a 10 Gbps connection to the Atlantic Wave in New York City from the StarLight Global Optical Lambda Exchange (GOLE), an international communications exchange in Chicago. The CA*net 4 and StarLight organizations manage the StarLight GOLE to provide interconnection services with advanced research networks world-wide.

To learn more, visit http://www.atlanticwave.net/.

Ground-Breaking 100 Gigabit Ethernet Demonstration Across 4,000 km Live Network

A first-ever demonstration of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) technology by a team of industry leaders, including Finisar, Infinera, Internet2, Level 3 Communications, and University of California at Santa Cruz, shows that 100GbE technology is viable and capable of implementation in existing optical networks with 10 Gigabit/second (Gb/s) wavelengths. This breakthrough trial also highlights how next-generation technology can address the emerging bandwidth needs of network providers and their users as advanced Internet-based applications continue to proliferate.

The system successfully transmitted a 100GbE signal from Tampa, Florida to Houston, Texas, and back again, over ten 10 Gb/s channels through the Level 3 network. This is the first time a 100GbE signal has been successfully transmitted through a live production network. The 100GbE system will be on display from November 14th to the 16th at the Infinera booth (Booth no. 1157) at the SC06 International Conference in Tampa. The system will be transmitting a 100GbE signal to the Internet2 booth (Booth no. 1451) during the show.

"This successful demonstration shows that this concept of 100GbE over 10x10 Gb/s DWDM works and provides a near future implementation path," said Dr. Daryl Inniss, vice president of Ovum-RHK's Communication Components research.

Source: https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/i2-news

E-rate Filing Window is Open -- Applications Must Be Received by February 7, 2007

The Federal Communications Commission recently revised items eligible for E-rate support. This year's Eligible Services List includes interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. Until this funding year, the service -- which enables users to make phone calls via the Internet -- was not eligible for E-rate discounts.

Interconnected VoIP is defined as a service that (1) enables real-time, two-way voice communications; (2) requires a broadband connection from the user's location; (3) requires Internet protocol-compatible customer premises equipment (CPE); and (4) permits users generally to receive calls that originate on the public switched telephone network and to terminate calls to the public switched telephone network.

Basic Internet access is eligible regardless of technology platform. Access technologies include but are not limited to:

• Telephone dial-up
• T-1 lines
• Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
• Cable Modem
• Wireless

To apply online, please visit http://www.sl.universalservice.org/menu.asp. To learn more about E-rate including tips to make your application a success, please visit http://www.e-ratecentral.com/.

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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