Districts Eager for CENIC Circuits and Services

Interest in system-funded network circuit upgrades is high among California community college districts, after attending the CENIC and CISOA Technology Conferences in March. These events detailed the free and auxiliary services available through the CCC membership with CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California.

Under the CENIC initiative, the California Community Colleges Technology Center is upgrading network circuits at all California community college campuses to 10Gbps, and providing 1Gbps diverse primary and secondary circuits at center sites. The project is expected to be completed by 2024-25 with installations wrapping up in 2025-26, addressing bandwidth needs for the next five to 10 years.

A Burgeoning Need

Colleges with concerns about circuit diversity, circuit relocation, or with installation into new campus buildings and center sites have been reaching out for circuit evaluations, as recommended at the CENIC Conference. College districts are typically eligible to receive circuit upgrades, moves or new CENIC managed circuits in these situations. Many new or relocated center sites– and a handful of replacement circuits– providing improved diversity have been approved and scheduled into the project plan by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (Chancellor’s Office). 

All requests for diverse circuits are reviewed as soon as the project schedule allows or immediately in the case of an outage. New, or unserved, student learning center sites are prioritized, and typically approved, for circuits as time and annual funds allow. Some circuit requests may need to be scheduled out to a future academic/fiscal year. 

While the CENIC initiative is currently focused on boosting internet connectivity at main campuses and centers, several districts are confronting a new demand on circuit capacity: student housing. Santa Rosa Junior College opted to share CENIC circuit bandwidth between the main campus and a new dorm building, limiting what Gbps that the dorm residents can use.

To address this need for internet service for student dorm residents, the Technology Center is developing a proposal to provide 10GB connectivity systemwide.

In another big win for the system, one district that had been reluctant to move away from district-managed circuits has decided to migrate all of their circuits to CENIC-managed. This is saving the district an estimated $30,950 per month, or $371,400 annually. Currently, 71 of our districts statewide are now taking full advantage of the CENIC initiative to cover their circuit costs.

End-of-Life Router Replacements

A number of CENIC router models have reached– or are nearing end-of-life– and need to be replaced to ensure the ongoing reliability and security of CCC campus networks. The Technology Center is coordinating with CENIC to schedule and implement the replacement work, which is expected to take place over the 2024-25 and 2025-26 fiscal years. This router replacement project is fully funded by the Chancellor’s Office and will kick-start in October.

There are 31 districts with router models that need to be replaced this year, who have recently been messaged through Constant Contact. These districts will receive an email in upcoming weeks from Cindy McCartney, CENIC Project Manager for the CCC Technology Center, with an invitation to fill out the CENIC EOL Router Replacement Scheduling survey. Router replacements will be scheduled in the order in which the surveys are received.

Supplementary Services in Demand

There is also surging interest in add-on services through CENIC, which leverage installed infrastructure to provide enhancements for a fee. Both Los Rios and San Diego community college districts have added 10GB CENIC Rapid Private Interconnect (RPI) circuits. These provide a secure, dedicated connection between a college site and selected external software peer points, such as Oracle in the case of these colleges. Los Rios district is also seeking to connect its data center to cloud-service providers through an Internet2 Cloud Connect circuit, which is similar to RPI but provides up to 5GB of service for free (though there may be additional cost associated with equipment installation).

Additionally, several districts have expressed interest in CENIC’s DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Mitigation Service (DMS) to prevent cybercrime that involves flooding a target with internet traffic, making it inaccessible to legitimate users. Two districts have opted to take on the fees associated with CENIC-managed DMS to secure their networks and four others have requested quotes.
The CENIC circuits initiative is supported by the Systemwide Infrastructure grant awarded to Butte-Glenn Community College District. This partnership between the Chancellor’s Office and the CCC Technology Center brings high-speed internet connectivity to all California community colleges through CENIC’s California Research and Education Network (CalREN). Learn more about CENIC at CENIC.org, and visit the CCC Technology Center at CCCTechCenter.org.