California Department of Technology & City of Sacramento Connect to CalREN
The California Department of Technology (CDT) will connect the state’s network to CENIC’s ultra-fast 100Gbps CalREN network. This connection has been made possible by the City of Sacramento, which signed a long-term fiber sharing agreement with CDT. The agreement enables the state to use Sacramento’s fiber assets and CENIC members to use the state’s technology service offerings. "This agreement plays a significant role in improving the delivery, efficiency and security of government services in the State of California,” said Chris Cruz, CDT’s Chief Deputy Director of Operations. “Now we can extend these services to CENIC’s research and education community thanks to Sacramento’s willingness to collaborate on solutions across government entities.”
CENIC’s 10,000 member institutions will now have access to the state’s technology service offerings, including its CalCloud Portfolio, the State of California’s private cloud, with service offerings such as computational resources, storage, and disaster recovery. CDT can also help CENIC members acquire assessment, planning, and implementation service contracts to enable migration to additional CDT services. This agreement will also enable the City of Sacramento to participate in statewide data-sharing initiatives with other cities who are connected — or will soon connect — to the CalREN network and to California’s academic research community. This will create a platform for sharing and analyzing data, enabling the exchange of best practices and new applications across California’s cities and counties. CENIC is working with communities throughout California to advance the Smart Cities movement through high capacity collection, use, and sharing of city-scale data and information technology.
For additional information, see the service catalog here, or contact one of these regional representatives:
Northern California:
Cruz Nieto
Cruz.Nieto@state.ca.gov
(916-431-4055)
Southern California:
Michael Ochoa
Michael.Ochoa@state.ca.gov
(916-200-8442)
The 20 million people who rely on CENIC’s network to connect with each other and the world want to know that their network is secure, safe and reliable. CENIC is committed to developing a robust security strategy and has recently hired Sean Peisert as Chief Cybersecurity Strategist. Sean sat down with Vice President and Chief Technology Officer John Dundas to discuss the need for enhanced security and the network’s role in addressing privacy and security issues for its users.
John Dundas sees a clear need: “Our systems have increased in complexity in such a way that no one person understands how any one system is interconnected with an unknown number of other systems. There was a time when there were a limited number of computers connected to any one network. Today every person walking onto a California campus or library arrives with a smartphone that can connect to its network with unknown apps and programs.” In the newly created role of Cybersecurity Strategist, Sean Peisert will assist the CENIC community in developing strategies to improve security. He points out that “there is universal agreement to do whatever we can to keep the network running to allow CENIC associates to communicate with each other and the outside world. That includes security and robustness—which are good engineering practices. By providing a robust network, I view that as a cog in the wheel to provide security for the network as a whole.” Sean and John look forward to engaging the CENIC community in this critical area of work.
Inder Monga, named new Executive Director ESnet
Indermohan “Inder” Singh Monga, an internationally recognized expert in advanced networking research, is the new executive director of the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network, better known as ESnet. He will also assume the role of director of the Scientific Networking Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which manages ESnet.
Monga’s research interests include network virtualization, software-defined networking and network architectures and he holds 23 granted patents. Monga is well-known in the evolving field of software-defined networking, an approach that allows network administrators to manage network services by decoupling various levels of network functionality, enabling more flexibility in moving data and meeting application requirements. We congratulate ESnet and Inder and look forward to continuing our strong and fruitful partnership.
Linda Crowe Inducted to California Library Hall of Fame
The California Library Hall of Fame honors the historical significance and lifetime achievements of the many librarians, library workers and supporters who have helped promote and improve library services in California. The California Library Association has just announced the 2016 California Library Hall of Fame inductees and among them is Linda Crowe, who helped to conceive of, found, and lead the historic High-speed Broadband in California Public Libraries initiative. Linda also co-founded Califa, led the merger of four cooperative library systems into the Pacific Library Partnership, and is a tireless advocate of robust broadband connectivity. The entire CENIC community congratulates Linda on this well-deserved recognition.
Read more about this award here >
View the Status of New and Upgraded Connections to CalREN on the New CENIC Connection Tracker
At any given time at CENIC, there can be hundreds of bandwidth upgrade projects in planning or implementation stages. These are complex projects with numerous steps to completion. The new CENIC Connection Tracker displays the status of projects that are currently in progress among three segments (with other segments to follow): K12, libraries, and community colleges.
The CENIC Connection Tracker displays each project in fourteen steps from the initial project overview meeting through to completion, showing progress for each individual institution, as well as aggregate process within a sector. At the end of each fiscal year, completed projects will become part of a project archive, while on-going projects will continue to be shown on the tracker, as many the timing of upgrade projects is frequently not coterminous with the fiscal calendar. This is a new tool intended to serve both CENIC associates and a vast community of stakeholders in public, private, and governmental sectors.
To check on a project of interest to you, first go to the appropriate CENIC segment, and you will see that the projects are then listed alphabetically. Simply click on the project you wish to view. (Sometimes an institution may have several concurrent upgrade projects). To understand what each step entails, click on that step for more detailed information. As noted previously, you can also see aggregate progress within a segment, as well. Work continues to make this tool useful for CENIC Associates and our constituents.
2017 CENIC Conference: March 19-22 at UC San Diego
Planning is underway for CENIC’s annual conference, The Right Connection | CENIC 2.0. This year’s conference marks the 20th anniversary of CENIC’s founding and will be held on March 19-22, 2017 at UC San Diego. The CENIC annual conference brings together CENIC’s richly diverse community — with participants from all levels of education, public and private research universities, public libraries, science and performing arts centers, private sector technology businesses, and city, county, and state government sectors.
California attendees will be joined by colleagues from around the globe, all of whom are leaders and visionaries in research and education. Attendees will hear from noted experts about innovations at the intersection of network technologies and scientific research, education, the arts, and public service. They will learn about innovations in networks and infrastructure, all of which support the missions of CENIC’s members. Attendees will share insights and opinions during the conference program, as well as in informal networking settings — all of which will take place in remarkable and beautiful conference venues, including Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Please join us for a celebration of 20 years of CENIC’s connecting California to the world and to contemplate, discuss, and make plans for the next 20 years of innovation in research and education.
Update: High-Speed Broadband in California Public Libraries
After two years of implementation, 127 out of 176 of the eligible library jurisdictions in the state are either connected to, or in the process of connecting to, CalREN. As a result of their work with Califa and CENIC, California public libraries will truly be Gigabit libraries with over 80% of main libraries connecting at 1 Gbps or higher. This sets a new national standard for Internet connectivity in public libraries and gives them the same type of broadband service enjoyed by K12 schools and the vast majority of higher education institutions in California. Connectivity for public library jurisdictions who joined the project in 2015 meets or exceeds this standard and a number of these library jurisdictions are connecting at speeds higher than 1 Gbps. For example, Glendale Public Library, Riverside Public Library, and Sacramento Public Library are all connecting at 10 Gbps. San Jose Public Library is connecting at 20 Gbps and Los Angeles Public Library is connecting to CalREN at 100 Gbps, a historic level of connectivity for a public library.
Asked to comment on the need for increased connectivity, Yuri Hurtado, Library Director at Upland Public Library, says “We've more than doubled the number of internet terminals for the public at the same time we're encouraging patrons to access our online resources from their own devices. Our cable Internet can't provide sufficient bandwidth to reliably support what many patrons want to do -- stream and download content."
Califa is now enrolling library jurisdictions who have not yet connected to CalREN. At this writing, 17 jurisdictions have indicated their intent to establish a new connection to CalREN in 2017-2018 and 21 jurisdictions, previously enrolled, have expressed an intent to connect additional branches to their hub sites.
Update: Upgrades Underway at California Community Colleges
California Community Colleges are one of CENIC’s Charter Associates and, with more than 2.1 million students on 113 campuses, is the largest system of higher education in the United States. Community college graduates are integral to California’s future and, with new funding available in the previous fiscal years, CENIC is working closely with the CCC Chancellor’s Office to significantly upgrade connections to CalREN. The planning team is looking holistically at each community college district and planning upgrades for colleges and centers within a district based on local needs and network topology issues.