Nov 5, 2025

CENIC is most often associated with the high-performance fiber-based network backbone that it created in 1996 on behalf of California’s research and education community. The 8,000-mile California Research and Education Network (CalREN) is the foundation for all services and benefits we provide to our members, but it’s only the beginning of the story.

Not only does the CalREN backbone extend to member institutions in every part of California but it also connects to other research and education networks in the US and beyond, distributed international peering facilities, major cloud providers, and the commercial Internet. CENIC not only connects to these networks, providers, and facilities but also participates in the discussions and governance that make them possible, representing your interests and those of California’s research and education communities around the world.

On the Network Maps page at our website, you’ll find maps of all these networks, peering facilities, and exchanges, showing how thousands of CENIC members connect to CalREN, and thus, to colleagues all over the globe. These maps include the following:

The CENIC Interactive Endpoint Map

Reaching out from the CalREN backbone, thousands of circuits purchased at bulk rates on behalf of our members and managed by CENIC penetrate every part of California, extending the backbone connection to thousands of schools, colleges, universities, libraries, and other research and cultural organizations. On our Interactive Endpoint Map, you can see how each segment of the CENIC membership connects to CalREN. Zoom in to see finer levels of detail, and click “CREATE PNG” to save a PNG to your local computer for your own use!

You can also download segment-specific Endpoint Maps showing how your segment’s institutions connect to the CalREN backbone.

The CENIC AI Resource Map

An ever-increasing number of CENIC members are participating in the CENIC AI Resource (CENIC AIR), the California portion of the National Research Platform (NRP). Many participating institutions voluntarily contribute compute and storage resources for the entire community, which are interconnected and accessed over CalREN via a Science DMZ that CENIC’s engineering team can help your institution implement.

On the CENIC AIR Champions Map, you can learn which CENIC member institutions are hosting compute and storage resources for use by all participants and even find advice from campus decision-makers, IT leadership, and faculty about participating and using these resources.

Peering and Partner Maps

In addition to CENIC-specific maps, our Network Maps page also includes maps of the Pacific Wave International distributed peering exchange—a joint project of CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)—and a map of the Western Regional Network—a collaboration of CENIC, PNWGP, Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP), the University of New Mexico, and the University of Hawai’i. Thanks to these partnerships and others, a high-performance network path to colleagues throughout the US and the world is available to all CENIC members.

Other partner maps you’ll find on our Network Maps page are shown above and include:

• Asia Pacific Oceania Network (APOnet) is a framework system that provides production-quality trans-oceanic networking for research and education in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and North America.
• Guam Open Research and Education eXchange (GOREX) aims to promote increased growth and effectiveness of data-intensive and highly collaborative research and education activities engaging the Asia-Pacific region with the global R&E community.
• North America Research and Education eXchange (NA-REX) is a collaboration between seven advanced research and education networks and exchange point consortia to provide a high-performance experimental network service connecting global exchange points in North America.
• Pacific Islands Research and Education Network (PIREN) fosters research and education network capacity to interconnect the Pacific Islands with each other and the global R&E network fabric by building on previous projects and relationships.
• The Quilt is the national coalition of non-profit US regional research and education networks representing 43 networks across the country.

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