Program highlights included trends in large-scale research and leading-edge applications for R&E

Seattle, February 27, 2013 – More than 100 leaders from research and education (R&E) networking organizations gathered at The Quilt’s Winter Member Meeting to discuss top technology trends and leading-edge applications for the R&E community. The meeting was held near the campus of University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California February 5-7. The Quilt is the national coalition of advanced regional R&E networks.

Sessions from the meeting focused on key developments in advanced networking to support large-scale, data-driven research. Eli Dart, network engineer of ESnet, presented on big data trends for researchers and provided insights into how regional networks might adapt to the requirements of extreme-data science. A panel of Quilt leaders shared perspectives on their organizations’ efforts to meet the challenges of supporting trends in big data for researchers, including the deployment of 100G infrastructure and software-defined networking.

The program continued with featured presentations on federal legislation of interest to Quilt members related to network architectures, security and telecommunications.

Also on the agenda was an opportunity for Quilt members to share communications strategies and learnings refined as a result of a series of outreach and advocacy workshops hosted by The Quilt in 2012. A team from Quilt member OneNet in Oklahoma presented on their experiences implementing its communication strategies. As Quilt members support R&E in a highly changing and technically complex environment, smaller groups convened at the meeting for focused discussions on such topics as OpenFlow and “above-the-net services” for Quilt member constituent groups.

“As a leader of a research and education networking organization, The Quilt member meeting programs strongly reflect my organization’s priority interests and ensure the opportunity for me to informally network with my national colleagues to exchange experiences and ideas,” said Cort Buffington, executive director, Kansas Research and Education Network or KanREN.

“Regional R&E networks often face common challenges, such as rapid technology change or pressures on traditional business models and thus we can learn a great deal from each other,” said Jen Leasure, president and CEO, The Quilt. “The Quilt’s biannual member meetings are designed to inform our members on topics that are of key interest to the regional networks as well as to provide the forum for our members to leverage one another’s knowledge and expertise to collectively advance networking for research and education.”

Immediately after the Member Meeting, The Quilt jointly hosted a first-of-its-kind Federated Identity and Access Management Workshop with InCommon, the identity management federation for U.S. R&E. The workshop was designed to develop a new distributed framework for federation that would extend InCommon Federation Services to K-12 and other community anchor institutions in collaboration with regional networks.

11/20/12

A Letter from the OSHEAN Board of Directors, Chair Susan Cerrone Abely:

I am pleased to announce that, after an extensive search, we have hired David Marble as the new President and CEO of OSHEAN.

David brings almost 30 years of experience in technology companies. He is experienced in operations planning, budget development and management as well as technical planning and project management.

Having worked with OSHEAN in the past as a business partner, David not only understands our mission, and our challenges, he also brings a keen perspective and innovative vision that will move us forward as we continue creating and expanding the cyber-infrastructure that is crucial to our region’s growth.

Most recently, David was the co-founder and director of operations of the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL).  AAEEBL established affiliations and collaborations with nearly all worldwide ePortfolio initiatives and cultivated membership of over one hundred academic institutions. He is also the founding member of MetaLearning, the strategic consulting group working in the use of technology for advanced learning environments. From 2001- 2007, David was the Chief Operating Officer and VP of Business Development for TAZZ Networks.

A lifelong Rhode Islander, David is committed to growing OSHEAN’s role as a strategic asset for the education and economic future of our region.

Please join me in welcoming David to our team. Over the next several weeks, he will be reaching out to each of you individually and I know he is looking forward to a close working relationship that will maximize operational efficiencies while providing service innovation for all of our members.

OSHEAN Article

Today Pacific Wave and Northern Wave announced an agreement that will allow their participants to peer with each other. Northern Wave will now connect Pacific Wave (www.pacificwave.net) in Seattle to the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility (www.startap.net/starlight) in Chicago. This relationship provides new opportunities for international research and education networks and university participants to exchange networking traffic at multi-Gigabit rates between the Pacific Rim, the US, and Europe. In addition, researchers and educators at any connecting institution along the Northern Wave path in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington will have access to participants on the Pacific Wave exchange.

Pacific Wave is state-of-the-art peering exchange facility that, for over 10 years, has connected research, scientific, and education institutions and networks throughout the Pacific Rim and the world, increasing network efficiency and throughput while reducing latency and costs. Pacific Wave is a joint project of the Corporation for Education and Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP) and is designed to enhance the efficiency of research and education network traffic across the west coast of the US and with partners around the Pacific Rim.

Northern Wave is a similar facility recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) via North Dakota State University (NDSU) and PNWGP to provide a new shared 10Gbps optical network connection between Seattle and Chicago for research and education institutions. The grant, part of NSF’s Academic Research Infrastructure program, funded optical equipment to build the network along a fiber path provided by PNWGP and the BOREAS network (a collaboration among the Universities of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin-Madison, and Iowa State University (www.boreas.net). “Northern Wave brings a significant new capacity to research and education networks through improved international communication facilities as well as the easy exchange of data for initiating collaborations with other institutions. This is especially important for the establishment of large competitive research centers. It will also provide connectivity to large computational and visualization platforms at remote locations,” says Kalpana Katti, North Dakota State University Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and NSF CAREER Award grantee.

“Connecting Northern Wave and Pacific Wave puts into place a new piece of the cyberinfrastructure necessary for complex interdisciplinary work on the cutting edge of science and technology,” said Amy Philipson, Executive Director, PNWGP. “Together with the other advances that Pacific Wave offers its participants, such as 100G networking along the US west coast, dynamic circuits, support for Science DMZ-model research networks, and software-defined networking, we’re delighted help facilitate the arrival of true 21st century networking.

” Northern Wave is supported by the National Science Foundation ARRA ARI Award No. 0963559.

Pacific Wave is supported by the National Science Foundation IRNC Award No. OCI-0962931.

StarLight receives support from the National Science Foundation, IRNC Award No. OCI-0962997 and ARRA ARI Award No. 0963095.

*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. For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

*About North Dakota State University (NDSU)* North Dakota State University is a student-focused, land-grant, research university — an economic engine that educates students, conducts primary research, creates new knowledge and advances technology. The university provides affordable access to an excellent education at a top-ranked research institution that combines teaching and research in a rich learning environment, educating future leaders who will create solutions to national and global challenges that will shape a better world. For more information, please visit http://www.ndsu.edu/.

*About Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)* The Pacific Northwest Gigapop is a nonprofit corporation serving research and education organizations throughout the Pacific Rim. They provide cost-effective, robust, reliable, high-bandwidth, and high-capacity networking to support the missions of these organizations and the needs of researchers, faculty, students, and staff. PNWGP designs, implements, and manages a multi-state high-bandwidth and high-capacity network specifically designed to meet unique requirements of research and education communities. For more information, please visit http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/.

*About StarLight* StarLight is the world’s most advanced national and international communications exchange facility. StarLight provides advanced networking services and technologies that are optimized for high-performance, large-scale metro, regional, national and global applications. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), StarLight was designed and developed by researchers, for researchers. StarLight is managed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, and Calit2 at University of California, San Diego, in partnership with Canada’s CANARIE national networking organization and The Netherlands’ SURFnet. (www.startap.net/starlight)