CalREN

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) launched the ONI (Optical Network Infrastructure) project in 2001, as a replacement for the various education networks in the State's 58 counties. CalREN has been deployed in the San Francisco-San Diego corridor, a distance of some 800 km from end to end, as well in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego metropolitan networks. Eventually, it will provide connectivity to 43 research and higher education sites, 125 colleges, and a large number of primary and secondary schools.

CENIC's optical architecture is quite similar to RISQ's. CalREN is a high-performance IP network based on dark fibre, CWDM or DWDM technologies depending on financial feasibility, and on 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. SONET is planned only for distant service points, and wavelength transport leasing is an available option in some cases.

The CalREN network is designed to meet the needs of three kinds of users:

• General users at research and educational institutions;
• Researchers whose applications require a very high performance network;
• Researchers in the field of optical networking who need dark fibre to do their work.

The first two groups require a production network with real traffic, and so receive special attention in terms of service reliability.