Benefits of CENIC Membership

CENIC's California Research and Education Network (CalREN) is a multi-tiered, high-performance network serving most research and education institutions in the state. Each year, 20 million Californians at nearly 12,000 institutions use CalREN, enjoying supremely reliable, efficient, and cost-effective access, as well as these benefits:

Networking and Technology Expertise Tailored to Members

• A purpose-built network providing services and solutions specifically designed for California’s research and education community: CENIC’s Engineering team deeply understands the networking needs of schools, libraries, colleges, and university campuses and works together with each member individually to craft the most cost-efficient and robust network and service solutions that support their mission now and into the future. CENIC designs and supports a wide range of solutions for our members, whether they lack IT groups or dedicated networking staff or have highly sophisticated technology teams.

• Cloud connectivity and content services: CalREN’s settlement-free peering services (with nearly 100 peers) provide high-speed access to many data-intensive sites frequented by researchers, students, and educators, such as AWS, Google, and Microsoft, as well as to other research and education networks around the world.
  This keeps a majority of CENIC-member traffic off the commercial internet,
  where most congestion and service quality issues occur.

• 24/7/365 Network Operations Center (NOC): CENIC’s NOC monitors the CalREN backbone and all connections into CalREN around the clock. Members can contact the NOC anytime, and CENIC’s team of experienced, highly trained network engineers will respond quickly and work with our members to resolve any issues.

• Network design expertise: CENIC engineers design, configure, and deploy all layers of the CalREN backbone infrastructure, ensuring that it is optimized and reliable for the high-performance needs of the research and education community.

• Optimal network diversity and resiliency: Both CENIC’s CalREN backbone and its operations have been designed for maximum resiliency, responsiveness, and improvement. Three principles function as the foundation for this: the provision of multiple pathways for not just data but network activities; accurate, useful, and well-socialized documentation and procedures; and periodic review of performance and carefully chosen metrics. For a deeper understanding of CENIC’s network design principles, we encourage you to review this one-pager. It offers a thoughtful exploration of the values and strategies that underpin our commitment to building networks that serve our community with resilience and purpose.

Economies of Scale

• Unlimited broadband usage: CENIC does not charge any members on a per-bit basis. In addition, CENIC Charter Associates also have access to the entire portfolio of networks that CENIC either manages or has peering relationships with, including access to Internet2, other R&E networks, the commodity Internet, other CENIC member institutions (through CalREN), and Layer 1 (wave), Layer 2 (VLAN), and Layer 3 (IP-VPN) services. A full catalog of network services can be found at cenic.org/network/network-service-catalog.

• Substantial discounts on circuits and equipment: CENIC represents the networking needs of California’s entire K-20 research and education community, enabling bulk purchasing power through our economies of scale that results in deeply discounted pricing for network hardware and software that would never be available to an individual institution purchasing these on its own.
  

• Federal and state subsidy assistance: CENIC obtains federal E-Rate discounts, ranging from 20% to 90%, on both one-time and recurring costs for Internet access and upgrades for eligible libraries and K–12 schools. CENIC also supports its members with the 50% California Teleconnect Fund discount for monthly recurring costs for schools, libraries, and community colleges, after E-rate discounts, if applicable.

• Project Management Office: Each member organization is assigned a CENIC project manager who works with their IT leaders to facilitate that organization’s networking needs, including planning circuit renewals, upgrades, and new circuits as needed; obtaining quotes for circuits and equipment; advising or actually providing circuit and equipment ordering; and overseeing deployment. CENIC project managers also work closely with telecommunications carriers on behalf of the members they serve.

Community and Collaboration

• Being part of a community of thousands of research and education institutions:
  By having CENIC membership and connecting to CalREN, members can directly interact not only with other CENIC members but also with other educational institutions around the globe, whether on policy matters, “how to’s,” timely information about network security issues and practices, data-intensive projects, and various other topics or issues related to how this type of dedicated high-performance infrastructure can best support the unique and evolving needs of R&E institutions.
  

• Participation in a collaborative membership organization: Members have multiple collaboration opportunities available to them. Examples include the CENIC Community Technology Affinity Group (C2TAG), the CENIC Security Technical Advisory Council (SEC TAC), attending training sessions and workshops on current topics, and informal or individually initiated collaboration. All of these collaborations allow members to learn from one another, assist one another in solving infrastructure challenges of various kinds, and provide input into how a campus network or CalREN itself may evolve. CENIC also organizes a biennial conference for its members. Attendees at this conference have multiple opportunities to learn about technology innovations and trends, network with colleagues in the member community, and share knowledge and feedback on their member segment's progress and challenges.
  

• Opportunities to publicize work to colleagues in California and beyond: CENIC members enhance both their positive institutional impact and the reach of their institution. Innovations in research and education at CENIC member institutions are powered by CENIC’s high-performance network and are publicized to a global audience in CENIC newsletters, blog posts, news announcements, and semi-annual reports. In addition, CENIC welcomes submissions or suggestions on topics of interest for publication to other members. Contact communications@cenic.org with questions or ideas.

Governance

• Decision-making power regarding your high-speed network: As a non-profit entity, CENIC’s business decisions are driven by the needs of our member institutions, not by shareholder profits. CENIC Charter Associates are represented on the Board of Directors and participate extensively in CENIC decision-making. All members can participate in committees, advisory councils, and events that focus on topics, innovations, and challenges that are relevant to CENIC members, as well as to the CalREN network, its performance, and its future.

• Advocating for your technology needs at the state and federal level: Since the beginning of CENIC nearly thirty years ago, CENIC’s member-driven governance has enabled it to represent its members’ interests very effectively. CENIC accomplishes this by functioning both as a high-performance network operator and as an administrator and fiduciary as may be required under specific legislative appropriations. At various times in the past, CENIC has provided expertise during government fact-finding missions, advocating for policies that not only promote the needs of the R&E community but also for the important public benefit of digital equity and ubiquitous broadband availability, access, and adoption.