California Research & Education Broadband Network Gets Massive 100-Gigabit Upgrade

Children Online Using Computer
The California Research & Education Network (CalREN) has nearly 10,000 connection sites among K-12, community colleges, University of California, California campuses, as well as private universities like Stanford and Caltech.  A broadband network used by California’s research universities and local schools has been upgraded to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps), officials announced earlier this week.  The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) manages and operates CalREN.
 
Officials from the participating institutions said the new 100-Gbps network backbone will help California retain its leading technological edge and bring the additional capacity needed to expand the network to other organizations, such as public libraries.
“Frontier research is being driven today by Big Data, growing in scale at an enormous rate,” said Larry Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a UC San Diego/UC Irvine partnership. “CENIC’s backbone upgrade to 100 Gbps is coming just in time to keep California in a leadership position.”
 
Traffic on the 3,800-mile fiber network continues to grow, said CENIC President and CEO Louis Fox.  “This makes ongoing network upgrades like this absolutely critical to the continued health of California’s spirit of innovation,” he said.
 
The network is CENIC’s primary focus, but it offers additional technology services, too. Last month the corporation announced the availability of cloud infrastructure services to CENIC members through partnership agreements withCenturyLink, FireHost and Verizon.