CENIC Today -- April 2008
CENIC Today
cenic-today at lists.cenic.org
Tue May 6 09:55:29 PDT 2008
[CENIC Today -- April 2008, Volume 11 Issue 4] <http://www.cenic.org/>
CENIC News:
* President's Message: Staying on the Cutting Edge for the CalREN
Network <#1>
* CalREN Update: Network Projects and Activities <#2>
* Pacific Wave Report: 2008 Starts Off Well for Int'l Peering
Organization <#3>
* SETI at home for Earthquakes: Stanford's Quake-Catcher Network <#4>
* CENIC & AT&T Announce Major Contract <#5>
* Spotlight on the CENIC International Internet Exchange <#6>
US & World Networking News:
* BBC iPlayer "risks overloading the Internet"
* Summit: Save STEM or Watch America Fail
* U.S. Internet, Health IT Prospects Improving
* Program Finalized for First International HealthGrid meeting to be
held in U.S., June 2-4, 2008
* Internet2 Archives Netcast Highlights of Annual Member Meeting
* UC Berkeley Offers A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on
Cellular Phone Technology
CENIC News
President's Message: Staying on the Cutting Edge for the CalREN Network
by Jim Dolgonas, CENIC President & CEO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Picture of Jim Dolgonas]
This month I'm pleased to report that we're reached a major milestone in
our efforts to maintain leading-edge networks for teaching and research.
When CENIC's first network began operation in 1998, we had only one
Layer 3, routed network, based on SONET technology rings in the northern
and southern parts of the state. Those rings were connected with a
slow-speed link through the Central Valley.
In 2002, that network was replaced and expanded into multiple network
tiers, creating the DC (Digital California) Network and the HPR
(High-Performance Research) Network, offering speeds of 2.5 and 10
Gigabits respectively throughout the entire CENIC-owned fiber-based
backbone. Supplementing the two production networks was the capability
of adding additional Layer 1 services for special purposes.
In 2006, the DC Technical Advisory Council brought forward to the CENIC
Board a plan to refresh the DC network. The upgrade plan included a
capacity upgrade, from the existing 2.5 Gigabit backbone speed to 10
Gigabits. I'm pleased to say that a major milestone in a multiple-phased
DC refresh was completed at the end of April, with new backbone routers
put into production throughout the network, with the exception of one
facility where we are still working to obtain needed power.
Over the next several months, circuits connecting County Offices of
Education, colleges, and universities will be migrated to the new
routers, additional features brought into production, and the old
routers removed from service. Subsequent to this, new optical equipment
will be installed to provide for technology currency.
Following the completion of the DC refresh, the HPR network will be
refreshed as well. Future articles will report on the progress of that
upgrade.
[***] <#top>
CalREN Update: Network Projects and Activities
by Ed Smith, CENIC Project Manager
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/The California K-12 System:/
During the month of April, CENIC continued to work with the K-12 segment
and telecommunications service providers on preparing for an upgrade of
a significant number of SONET circuits to Gigabit connections.
Currently, service providers are conducted site visits to identify site
readiness other site issues. The process is moving forward toward the
identification of circuit acceptance testing dates.
/California's Community Colleges:/
Acceptance testing was completed on new Gigabit circuits at the San
Mateo <http://www.smccd.edu/> and Kern <http://www.kccd.edu/> Community
College Districts. Migration dates for these two sites are still
pending, and the DS3 circuits currently serving these two districts will
be left in place afterwards to provide diversity.
A significant milestone was reached on April 28 when CENIC engineers
completed acceptance testing on a DS3 circuit for Palo Verde College
<http://www.paloverde.edu/>. Because of its relative geographic
isolation and lack of telecommunications infrastructure in the area,
Palo Verde College, located in Blythe, had not enjoyed broadband
connectivity to CalREN until now.
/The California State University:/
The on-campus conduit work at CSU Stanislaus <http://www.csustan.edu/>'
Stockton Center <http://stockton.csustan.edu/> has been completed and
this site is now expected to get their DS3 circuit in early June.
/The University of California:/
The University of California Office of State Governmental Relations
<http://www.ucop.edu/state/welcome.html> will be getting its own
connection to CalREN. Be sure to keep an eye out for future issues of
CENIC Today for more details as we move further along toward
connectivity for this office, which serves to advance understanding of
and support for the University's tripartite mission of teaching,
research, and public service in Sacramento.
[***] <#top>
Pacific Wave Report: 2008 Kicks Off Well for Int'l Peering Organization
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If 2008 continues as it's begun, it promises to be a banner year for the
Pacific Wave <http://www.pacificwave.net/> distributed international
peering facility, a joint project of CENIC and the Pacific Northwest
Gigapop <http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/> in collaboration with The
University of Washington <http://www.uwashington.edu/>.
Pacific Wave helped UCSD <http://www.ucsd.edu/>'s California Institute
for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2
<http://www.calit2.net/>) reach across the Pacific Ocean for an
OptIPortal demonstration for Australian government officials on January
15-16, 2008. For more information you can read the AARNet release
<http://www.aarnet.edu.au/Article/NewsDetail.aspx?p=61&id=129> or
Calit2's press release
<http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1219>.
During January 17-25, 2008, people from advanced networks around the
world came together at the East-West Center on the campus of University
of Hawaii for Techs in Paradise 2008 <http://www.hawaii.edu/tip2008/>,
featuring meetings, workshops, tutorials, and collaborations. A
10-Gigabit connection from Pacific Wave to the venue provided some of
the conference's high-bandwidth capacity for remote participation and
video conferencing, and enabled scientists, researchers, and network
engineers to present and collaborate on a wide variety of issues and
topics.
As of March, the interface to connect the Internet2
<http://www.internet2.edu/> DCN OC-192 link to CENIC/Pacific Wave
facilities was acquired and sent to the facility. CENIC is awaiting
installation of fibers from Internet2 to complete the connection.
Agreements were received for the Japan Gigabit Network's (JGN2Plus
<http://www.jgn.nict.go.jp/jgn2plus_preview/english/about_jgn2plus/index.html>)
new 10-Gigabit connection in Los Angeles at the 818 W. 7th location.
NII/SINET <http://www.sinet.jp/>'s connections were upgraded from three
separate Gigabit ports to a single 10-Gigabit port in Los Angeles at the
One Wilshire location. Decommission of the Gigabit ports will be done
after engineers determine the new connection is stable.
Pacific Wave is a state-of-the-art international peering exchange
facility designed to serve research and education networks throughout
the Pacific Rim and the world, and creates a new peering paradigm by
removing the geographical barriers of traditional peering facilities. It
enables any US or international network to connect at any of three
locations along the US Pacific coast, as well as offers the option to
peer with any other Pacific Wave participant, regardless of physical
location.
By presenting a seamless, unified, international peering exchange
facility at strategic Pacific coast locations, the Pacific Wave peering
facility functions as a magnet for research and education partners
throughout Canada, Mexico, South America and the Pacific Rim.
Other news is in the works for Pacific Wave, so be sure to keep an eye
out for further updates!
[***] <#top>
SETI at home for Earthquakes: Stanford's Quake-Catcher Network
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Quake-Catcher Network Logo]
Most of CENIC Today's readers are familiar with projects like SETI at home
<http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/index.php> and the similar project
Folding at home <http://folding.stanford.edu/>. Both projects use the power
of distributed computing to perform calculations that would be
prohibitive in terms of processing by taking advantage of the vast
number of networked laptop and desktop computers in homes and offices
around the world. Most such machines sit idle for a significant fraction
of time, and through software that can be downloaded from these sites,
they can be networked ad hoc during their idle time to create one of the
largest /de facto/ supercomputers in the world. Through SETI at home,
Folding at home, and other related projects, every laptop and desktop
computer can work with every other one to help solve some of the
scientific world's most challenging problems.
To that set of creative projects, add Stanford University
<http://www.stanford.edu/>'s Quake Catcher Network
<http://qcn.stanford.edu/>. Earthquake detection requires highly
specialized equipment which is used to detect ground motion, and at
first, the idea of using a distributed computing network to detect
earthquakes seems like a strange one because of this.
When one realizes that many laptops have accelerometers built into them,
it becomes much more plausible. Add in real-time networking, and
suddenly a distributed quake-catcher network does indeed have the
potential to detect earthquakes over a far larger and more granular area
-- everywhere where there is a computer, in fact.
Laptops are subject to motion, but analyzing the signals from many such
devices allows to separate out good candidates for earthquakes from
random motion. Desktop computers are an excellent addition to the
network as they tend to be more stably situated, and indeed the
Quake-Catcher Network plans to offer low-cost USB motion sensors in the
future to volunteers who wish to participate. The network also plans to
include K-12 classrooms as participants.
Be sure to check out the Quake Catcher Network
<http://qcn.stanford.edu/> and sign up for their mailing list to stay
abreast of new developments!
[***] <#top>
CENIC & AT&T Announce Major Contract
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CENIC has entered into a new five-year, $50 million contract with AT&T
<http://www.att.com/>.
This business agreement extends a relationship between AT&T and CENIC
that spans more than 10 years.
The contract aims at increasing broadband connectivity for CalREN and
will serve every segment of the state's public education system and the
9.5 million Californians who use CalREN every day.
[***] <#top>
Spotlight on the CENIC International Internet Exchange
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Picture of One Wilshire Building]
The CENIC International Internet Exchange (CIIX <http://www.ciix.net/>),
formerly known as the Los Angeles Access Point (LAAP), provides physical
interconnections at locations in the Los Angeles area for its
participants to exchange Internet traffic through co-operative
bi-lateral peering agreements.
ISPs, content providers, cable networks, universities, not-for-profits,
etc. are all welcome to join the CIIX providing they meet the
participation criteria. These criteria are clearly laid out in the CIIX
Services Agreement Service Policies and Procedures, to which
participants must agree and adhere. Organizations who think they may
meet CIIX participation criteria <http://www.ciix.net/services/> and are
interested in participating are encouraged to contact the CIIX
<http://www.ciix.net/contact_us.html>.
Co-founded in 1996 with Metropolitan Fiber Systems' MAE-LA, the Los
Angeles Access Point (now CIIX) was previously a project of the
Information Sciences Division of the University of Southern California
<http://www.usc.edu/>. It now features locations in the most
interconnected building on Earth -- One Wilshire at 624 S. Grand -- with
interconnections to Telehouse's LAIIX, located at 626 Wilshire Blvd.
[***] <#top>
US & World Networking News:
BBC iPlayer "risks overloading the Internet"
Source: Times Online
<http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3716781.ece>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The success of the BBC's iPlayer is putting the internet under severe
strain and threatening to bring the network to a halt, Internet service
providers claimed yesterday.
They want the corporation to share the cost of upgrading the network ---
estimated at £831 million --- to cope with the increased workload.
Viewers are now watching more than one million BBC programmes online
each week.
The BBC said yesterday that its iPlayer service, an archive of
programmes shown over the previous seven days, was accounting for
between 3 and 5 per cent of all internet traffic in Britain, with the
first episode of The Apprentice watched more than 100,000 times via a
computer.
Summit: Save STEM or Watch America Fail
Source: eSchool News
<http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53697;_hbguid=8063c0d6-2405-465f-8e47-53f07b253979&d=top-news>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two years after a report called "Rising Above the Gathering Storm"
warned that the United States is falling behind in math and science
education, endangering America's competitiveness in the global economy,
education leaders, lawmakers, and cabinet members met for a national
summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss what progress -- if any -- has
been made in closing the gap.
Their verdict: The U.S. needs to make a greater investment in critical
math, science, and research programs for these efforts to succeed.
In the two years since the National Academies issued its Gathering Storm
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11463> report, Congress passed
a bill called the America COMPETES Act, which outlined measures to
improve math and science research and education. The legislation called
for expanding science research by doubling the basic research budgets
for the National Science Foundation <http://www.nsf.gov/>, the National
Institute of Standards and Technology <http://www.nist.gov/>, the
Department of Energy's Office of Science <http://www.er.doe.gov/>, and
the Department of Defense <http://www.defenselink.mil/>.
U.S. Internet, Health IT Prospects Improving
Source: iHealth Beat
<http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2008/5/1/US-Internet-Health-IT-Prospects-Improving.aspx?a=1>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An international report ranks the United States' Internet infrastructure
among the best in the world, tempering dire predictions of Internet
traffic jams and suggesting the U.S. system is getting better, not worse.
With a rural broadband health project under way and new political fervor
for health IT brewing, prospects for online health applications in the
U.S. are looking better as well, some experts say.
The Global Information Technology Report
<http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Information%20Technology%20Report/index.htm>,
released last month, ranked the U.S. fourth in the world in Internet
readiness. The rankings -- done for the World Economic Forum by INSEAD,
a French business school -- assessed 127 economies in its Networked
Readiness Index based on variables such as total tax base,
collaborations between universities and industry, and availability of
venture capital.
Program Finalized for First International HealthGrid meeting to be held
in U.S., June 2-4, 2008
Source: NLR News
<https://mailman.nlr.net/pipermail/news/2008-April/000167.html>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The HealthGrid U.S. Alliance has finalized the program for the sixth
annual International HealthGrid conference
<http://chicago2008.healthgrid.org/> -- the first one to be held in the
United States, "Global HealthGrid: eScience Meets Biomedical Informatics."
"As the first HealthGrid conference in the Americas, this is an historic
event," says Jonathan Silverstein, M.D., President, HealthGrid.US, and
Associate Director, Computation Institute, Argonne/University of
Chicago. "The program will appeal broadly to the interdisciplinary
eScience and biomedical informatics communities, including physicians,
medical educators, students, epidemiologists, biomedical informaticians,
military medicine specialists, computer scientists, security and policy
makers, economists, and futurists."
The conference begins on June 2 with a day of workshops and tutorials
which will provide training and demonstrations, including basic Grid
concepts, case studies and the most advanced topics on infrastructure
and applications for computational biologists and public health
informaticians.
The formal conference will kick-off on June 3, with welcoming remarks by
Robert J. Zimmer, Ph.D., President of the University of Chicago.
Following the welcoming ceremonies, Ian Foster, Ph.D., will provide a
keynote presentation on "eScience meets Biomedical Informatics."
Scientific papers will be complemented with a roundtable discussion from
U.S., European, and Asian government leaders on "Government eScience and
Cyberinfrastructure Programs for HealthGrid," moderated by Michael
Cowan, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Bearing Point, and former U.S. Navy
Surgeon General. Cowan will precede the government roundtable discussion
with a keynote presentation on "The Role of Government in the Future
Knowledge Society."
Internet2 Archives Netcast Highlights of Annual Member Meeting
Source: Internet2 <http://events.internet2.edu/2008/spring-mm/netcast.cfm>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet2 held its annual Spring Member Meeting from April 21-23, 2008
in Arlington, VA. The meeting brought together nearly 600 leaders from
research and education to address key advances in high-performance
networking and leading-edge Internet technologies. The meeting
encompassed a diverse roster of presentations, sessions, working group
gatherings, and workshops in areas such as dynamic circuit networking,
advancements and adoption of middleware capabilities, security on
high-performance networks, as well as presentations on advanced
applications.
Internet2 netcast a select number of meeting sessions live for worldwide
viewing, and all netcasts are archived and available
<http://events.internet2.edu/2008/spring-mm/netcast.cfm>. This year,
there was a particularly important focus on the Internet2 Strategic
Planning efforts, a major undertaking by the Internet2 community to
reinvent the direction and priorities of the Internet2 organization.
UC Berkeley Offers A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on
Cellular Phone Technology
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
<http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2953>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a
way to transmit medical images such as X-rays and ultrasounds via
cellphones.
The technology involves reducing large, complicated medical images to
six kilobytes ("A one sentence, text-only e-mail message is bigger than
that," one of the researchers commented in a university news release.) A
cellphone transmits raw data to an offsite location. There the data is
processed into an image and sent back to the cellphone's screen. This
technique is intended to bring sophisticated medical-imaging technology
to developing countries, where expensive medical-imaging equipment is
often out of reach.
The entire research article
<http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002075>
can be found online.
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 <http://www.cenico.rg/>.
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Today at http://lists.cenic.org/mailman/listinfo/cenic-today.
[(c) Copyright 2008 CENIC. All Rights Reserved.] <http://www.cenic.org/>
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