Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd (REANNZ) selects Fujitsu as supplier of Brocade Ethernet switch technology for the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN).

Following substantial interest from a large range of industry participants and a robust procurement process, Fujitsu New Zealand has been selected to provide the Brocade MLX Ethernet Switching platforms for KAREN.

The July KAREN Member Open Forum will be held 12:00 - 1:00pm, Friday 30 July 2010. These monthly forums provide an opportunity for KAREN Members to learn about and quiz us directly on the latest developments at REANNZ.

KAREN's international capacity is set to leap forward to an impressive 1Gb/s. This is one of the features of KAREN's new international connectivity to be provided by TelstraClear from November 2010.

We're excited to announce that seven Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) will join the KAREN community in the next few months. This follows the conclusion of our procurement process for hardware and connectivity services for the ITPs.

The June KAREN Member Open Forum will be held 12:00 - 1:00pm, this Friday, 25 June 2010 via the AARNet VC bridge. These monthly forums provide an opportunity for KAREN Members to learn about and quiz us directly on the latest developments at REANNZ.

Recently eight members of the KAREN community were welcomed into the KAREN Awards hall of fame. 

REANNZ is seeking applications for two new positions: 'Senior Engagement Specialist' and 'Corporate and Finance Manager'.

REANNZ released a RFP for edge routers for the National Education Network trial extension last night.

KAREN Members can now sponsor businesses they are collaborating with to connect to KAREN.

The April KAREN Member Open Forum will be held 12:00 - 1:00pm, Friday 30 April 2010 via the AARNet VC bridge. These monthly forums provide an opportunity for KAREN Members to learn about and quiz us directly on the latest developments at REANNZ. Led by Mark Cordy, this forum will focus on REANNZ's Procurement activities.

The March KAREN Member Open Forum will be held 12:00 - 1:00pm, Friday 26 March 2010 via the AARNet VC bridge. These monthly forums provide an opportunity for KAREN Members to learn about and quiz us directly on the latest developments at REANNZ.

If you're new to KAREN or in need of a refresher, check out KARENmedia's Channel on YouTube for two new presentations about KAREN and the role of REANNZ.

Funding up for grabs... The KAREN CBF Travel and Event Fund is open for applications.

KAREN Member update on REANNZ's RFPs for national and international connectivity, and associated equipment and services.

The second KAREN Member Open Forum will be held 12:00 - 1:00pm, Friday 26 February 2010. These monthly forums provide an opportunity for KAREN Members to learn about and quiz us directly on the latest developments at REANNZ.

Issue 10 of hyphen, KAREN's newsletter, is out now. hyphen brings you interesting articles on KAREN, services and the successes of our members.

The inaugural KAREN Member Open Forum will be held 12:00 - 1:00pm, Friday 29 January 2010. These monthly forums provide an opportunity for KAREN Members to learn about and quiz us directly on the latest developments at REANNZ.

REANNZ is excited to welcome Laurence Zwimpfer as the Implementation Manager of the National Education Network trial extension.

REANNZ recently established two Working Groups bringing together representatives from academia, science and information technology from across our Membership to provide an agreed, community-owned way forward on the development of KAREN and associated services.

REANNZ is seeking applications for two new positions within the National Education Network team - School Liaison Specialist and Technical Procurement Specialist.

Starting January 2010, REANNZ will trial a new way of communicating with Members - regular, open forums with Donald Clark and others from the REANNZ team via video conference.

REANNZ is seeking applications for the role of Implementation Manager of the National Education Network.

KAREN wiki highlights, recent updates and cool stuff you should know about for November 2009.

REANNZ last night released four RFPs for KAREN connectivity and services.

KAREN’s global connectivity expanded

KAREN’s international network capacity between Australia and New Zealand has been doubled in capacity in response to Member demand.

REANNZ has signed an agreement with Verizon Business to double KAREN’s current international network capacity between Australia and New Zealand from 155Mb/s to 310Mb/s.

Check out highlights and insights from 2008/09 in the REANNZ Annual Report 08/09.

KAREN will be live at the upcoming 2009 ULearn educator's conference in Christchurch 7 - 9 October.

Issue 9 of hyphen, KAREN's newsletter, is out now. hyphen brings you the latest information on KAREN, services and the successes of our members.

Professor John Raine has been appointed Chair of the Board of Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd.

The Government has announced a $16m investment in KAREN to support leading-edge connectivity for research and education, as part of Budget 2009.

Issue 8 of hyphen, KAREN's newsletter, is jam-packed with goodness and out now for your reading pleasure.

REANNZ has decided not to go ahead with issuing an RFP for a new trans-Tasman cable.

You can now follow KARENnews on Twitter.

Are you from a University or CRI and have a workshop or project in mind that could help increase your use or promotion of KAREN? Then you should consider making an application to the 2009 round of the Capability Build Fund.

2009 Capability Build Fund

REANNZ is now accepting applications for the balance of the Capability Build Fund (CBF). $380,000 is now available to support travel, event or project proposals. The CBF Advisory Panel expects to fund between four and five projects from the available funds.

Speaking at the recent Commerce Commission's 'Broadband at a crossroads' conference, Donald Clark gave an insight into the next generation of KAREN - towards a hybrid optical / packet network.

A world-first report commissioned by REANNZ shows that the return on dedicated high-speed networks are estimated to be $200-220m a year.

Media release

Two years into its life KAREN has exceeded expectations, with REANNZ arguably now the government’s expert agency for smart and efficient purchasing of broadband, according to REANNZ CEO, Donald Clark.

December 15 2008 marked KAREN’s 2nd birthday, and Mr Clark used the opportunity to highlight its many impressive milestones.

Join us tomorrow to hear Julia Charity, Scion's KAREN champion, share her strategies for increasing video conference usage among Scion's research community.

Video conferencing is an easy and effective tool for supporting research collaboration and outreach.

REANNZ has two exciting job opportunities open for applications. These newly-created roles reflect a new direction and challenge for REANNZ, in growing its client base in new sectors and in expanding the range of services available on KAREN.

Issue 7 of hyphen, the newsletter about and for KAREN members, is out now. Check it out for features on:

KAREN video conference trial participants are making the most of this service and simplifying real-time collaboration. Are you taking advantage of this fantastic service?

REANNZ Chief Executive,  Donald Clark, appointed Councillor of InternetNZ for a three-year term.

Media release

International connectivity

“REANNZ warmly welcomes the Government’s initiative to invest in additional international telecommunications capacity to meet the future needs of the research and education sector. This will provide a step-change in opportunities for the KAREN community to collaborate and innovate”, said Donald Clark, REANNZ Chief Executive, today after the Government budget announcements.

KAREN project fund recipients announced

5 projects will receive total funding of $785,000 from the Capability Build Project Fund. The successful projects take full advantage of KAREN's capabilities, and will accelerate collaboration, skill development, and the use of KAREN.

Issue 6 of our newsletter hyphen is out now bringing you news, reviews and information on KAREN and the successes of our members.

On a recent trip to the US Donald Clark was invited by Vint Serf, Chief Internet evangelist at Google, to present at a Google tech talk session on the opportunities and challenges faced by KAREN and the research and education community in New Zealand.

Saturday 15 December marked the first-year anniversary of KAREN.

University of Auckland eResearch Director and KAREN champion Paul Bonnington is crossing the ditch to take up the Directorship of Monash University eResearch Centre.

KAREN has been named as one of two finalists in the TUANZ Next Generation Fibre-Optic Network Award category of the TUANZ Innovation Awards 2007.

Information about the KAREN awards - acknowledging members of the KAREN community who have made an outstanding contribution to KAREN - is now available on our website.

KAREN users Chris Brown and Mik Black from the University of Otago featured - along with KAREN itself - on Radio New Zealand National's Our Changing World programme this Thursday, 28 of June.

The progamme will be available as a stream for the coming month at the Radio New Zealand website.  It is also available as a podacast.  (Programme length 12'31'')

REANNZ is a relatively new Crown Company providing innovative, leading edge technology to both national and international research ers, educators and innovators.

The primary KAREN VLAN was changed to support a 9000 byte IP MTU on Tuesday, 26 June.  This change allows members to take advantage of the low latency, high bandwidth characteristics of KAREN to achieve greater data throughput than conventional networks permit.  This is achieved without impacting the support for existing traffic.

KAREN members have already been taking advantage of the possibilities that this change allows. Ben Yeldon of AUT and Craig Miskell of AgResearch have performed some initial testing.

"Testing has shown a 3-fold increase in overall throughput when using large (4000byte+) frames vs 1500byte frames", says Craig.

This performance gain was seen without performing any tuning of the systems involved.

Two exciting and unique positions have been created at REANNZ as a result of our latest strategic planning exercise:

Several network access providers have enquired about the possibility of providing aggregation services, ie sharing a core KAREN connection with more than one end customer.  Such a service can be useful where customers do not have the funding available to purchase a 1Gb/s last mile connection or the required equipment to deal with the routing and other specifications of a core KAREN connection. 

REANNZ has created a new ‘Enabled by KAREN’ logo for use by KAREN member organisations.

Trip Report: APAN23 Manila, January 2003

Donald Clark and Julie Watson from REANNZ and Paul Bonnington from University of Auckland attended the 23rd Asia Pacific Advanced Networks meeting in Manila.  The meeting offered a chance to:

Development work on Phase 2 of the KAREN website is underway. The key development is the creation of community specific 'sub- sites' providing KAREN communities with their own online space. You will also see some changes to the main site, including the redesign of the homepage and the addition of a photo gallery.

REANNZ staff were fortunate to undertake two international trips during 2006.

Annual Tertiary IT Conference, 12-14 September 2006, Christchurch, NZ

I attended the first day of the Annual Tertiary IT Conference (http://www.tertiaryitconference.co.nz/).  It was well attended with about 70 delegates; a mix of vendors and IT staff from the Tertiary Education Institutes (TEIs), most of the Universities and some Industry Training Oganisations. John Buckler, conference host, had organised a good mix of speakers, breakout sessions, roundtables and plenary sessions over the 3 days. I gave an overview presentation on KAREN, the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network.