CENIC Announces Winners of its On the Road to a Gigabit Awards.

News Editors/Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 5, 2003

While CENIC's mantra of A Gigabit or Bust(TM) may seem a bit "over the top" to some sectors of the telecommunications industry, California's visionaries are once again leading the way to tomorrow's Internet.

With a grant from the State of California, CENIC's Next Generation Roundtable is focusing on speeding One Gigabit broadband to all Californians by 2010, or in California "shorthand," One Gigabit or Bust(TM).

On May 7, 2003, CENIC will recognize the winners of its On the Road to a Gigabit Awards at an awards luncheon to be held at 11:30 a.m. at the Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, Calif. The awards spotlight industry, academia, government and community organizations who are applying ultra high performance network technology in innovative ways to encourage the development and implementation of a ubiquitous Gigabit state-wide network by 2010.

CENIC's goal of a one gigabit per second (Gbps) ultra broadband infrastructure for all Californians represents more than a thousand-fold increase from today's commercial DSL and cable networks. It is this increased functionality and performance of the nation's broadband infrastructure that promises to once again spur enormous potential for continued U.S. economic growth.

Larry Smarr, Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and Harry E. Gruber, Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Computer Science and Engineering, lauded CENIC for advocating a Gigabit or Bust to every home, school and business by 2010. "Today's research and education communities are living in the future and beginning to realize the benefits of a 10 to 40 Gigabit network. In many ways we are in a very similar situation as 10 years ago when the Internet was an unknown entity to a majority of people. The winners in the On the Road to a Gigabit awards showcase the 'Best of the West' in network technology and applications. Remember Mosaic? Well, hold on to your hats, we're just getting a glimpse of living in a Gigabit world."

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, also known as Cal-(IT)2, co-sponsored the On the Road to a Gigabit awards, and Smarr was one of the judges. Other experts judging the nominations included Susan Estrada, CEO, Aldea Communications; Jim Hawley, Director of California Outreach, TechNet; Jeff Newman, Partnership Manager, Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation, California Technology, Trade & Commerce Agency; John Silvester, Vice Provost for Scholarly Technology, University of Southern California; and Thomas W. West, President of CENIC.

CENIC received more than 60 nominations for the On the Road to a Gigabit Awards; the categories for the best uses of high performance networking include:

-- Biggest, Fastest in the West: The Biggest, Fastest in the West

Award honors the fastest and most scalable high-performance

networking application/technology.

-- Winner: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC): R. Les

Cottrell, Assistant Director, SLAC Computer Services

Scientists at Caltech, CERN, SLAC and Los Alamos National

Laboratory set up a high performance trans-Atlantic

network testbed with a 10 Gigabit per second link between

Sunnyvale, Calif. and Chicago, and utilizing the 2.5

Gigabit per second DataTAG link between Chicago and

Geneva. The team transmitted over a Terabyte of data in

just under an hour from SLAC near Sunnyvale to CERN in

Geneva.

-- Honorable Mention: University of Southern

California-Information Sciences Institute: James Pepin,

CTO, Director, Center for High Performance Computing and

Communications

-- Community: The Community Award honors innovative uses of

high-performance networking to overcome network disadvantages

(economic and/or location based).

-- Winner: Inteleconnect, Inc.: Stephen Mayo, President/Owner

Designed a 100 megabits per second fiber-to-the-home

network which was deployed in a new community of 3,800

homes, and included an elementary and middle school, in

Lake Elsinore, Calif. In addition, a community intranet

facilitates communications and news within the community.

-- Honorable Mention: California State Parks: Allan Friedman,

CIO 

-- Education: The Education Award honors innovative uses of

high-performance networking in K-12 and higher education.

-- Winner: Center for the Teaching of Social Justice: Judith

Green, UC Santa Barbara; and Gail Desler, Elk Grove

Unified School District 

K-12 students in Santa Barbara served as docents of a

virtual tour of artifacts from the Henrietta Marie, a

slave ship that sank off the Florida coast nearly 300

years ago that was on exhibit at the Karpeles Library in

Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara students interacted

face-to-face with their peers in Sacramento's Elk Grove

School District using the resources of the Digital

California Project's high-performance network. Later, the

Sacramento students shared their expertise on life in

migrant camps.

-- Honorable Mention: Orange County Department of Education:

Sandra Lapham, Administrator, Instructional Technology

-- Gigabit or Bust: The Gigabit or Bust Award honors the

high-performance networking application/technology that best

exemplifies what life would be like in a gigabit-connected

world.

-- Winner: Imperial County Office of Education: Todd Finnell,

Director, Learning Technologies

Imperial County has developed a ubiquitous countywide

Gigabit Ethernet fiber-optic network connecting schools

and public agencies throughout their remote and

underserved region.

-- Honorable Mention: City College of San Francisco: Tim A.

Ryan, Network Manager

-- Innovation: The Innovation Award recognizes innovative

contributions to high-performance networking that best

exemplify the creative spirit and the bottoms-up philosophy

that created the Internet.

-- Winner: Dandin Group, Dewayne Hendricks, CEO

As part of the National Science Foundation program for

Advanced Networking with Minority-serving Institutions

(AN-MSI), Motorola's wireless unlicensed Canopy solution

has been deployed on three Indian Reservations. Motorola's

Canopy solution set a distance record for wireless

products of this class of 27 miles, delivering 20 megabits

of bandwidth.

-- Honorable Mention: ArrayComm: Katie Juran, Corporate

Communications Director

-- Partnership: The Partnership Award honors the best use of

high-performance networking developed by a private/public

partnership.

-- Winner: El Monte Union High School District and SBC:

Garett McKay, Director of Information Services Technology,

El Monte; and Ken Mills, Technical Sales Engineer, SBC

The economically-disadvantaged school district worked with

network equipment vendors to develop a creative capability

for gigabit bandwidth on demand to all of the district's

high schools.

-- Honorable Mention: Light Bridge, Sonoma State University:

James Fouche, Director

The On the Road to a Gigabit Awards ceremony will be held in conjunction with the CENIC 2003 annual conference at the Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, May 7, 8 and 9. The first day of the conference not only highlights the technologies paving the road to a Gigabit world, but also showcases the developments of CENIC's Next Generation Internet Roundtable, including the release of the CENIC-commissioned study by Gartner entitled "One Gigabit or Bust Initiative -- A Broadband Vision for California."

For more information on the awards, contact Molly Petrick, CENIC NGI Roundtable Director, [e-mail].

For complimentary media registration, contact Julie Van Fleet by phone at 619/276-0090 or by email at [e-mail].

About CENIC

CENIC is a not-for-profit corporation serving the California Institute of Technology, California State University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Southern California, California Community Colleges and the statewide K-12 school system. CENIC's mission is to facilitate and coordinate the development, deployment and operation of a set of robust multi-tiered advanced network services for this research and education community.

More information about CENIC can be found at www.cenic.org.