CANARIE (formerly the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education) is the not-for-profit organisation which operates the national backbone network of Canada's national research and education network (NREN). The organisation receives the majority of its funding from the Government of Canada. It supports the development of research software tools; provides cloud resources for startups and small businesses; provides access and identity management services; and supports the development of policies, infrastructure and tools for research data management.
History
The Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education was created in 1993. It initially focused on the development of the CANARIE network, which provides interprovincial and international connectivity for Canada's National Research and Education Network (NREN). Provincial and territorial partners in the NREN provide connectivity to institutions in their jurisdictions, and connect to CANARIE to collaborate and share data and tools across Canada and around the world. The NREN connects universities, colleges, research hospitals and government research labs. CANARIE links Canada's NREN to over 100 NRENs around the world. The CANARIE network was originally called CA*net or CAnet. The original CA*net was created in 1990 with support from the National Research Council. In 1993 that CANARIE had upgraded its links to 56 kbit, to 10 Mbit/s in 1995, and then later to 20 Mbit/s. It had 100 Mbit/s aggregate capacity in 1996, and the same year the National Test Network (NTN) project introduced ATM.
In 1997, Bell Advanced Communications Inc. (later Bell Nexxia, now part of Bell Canada) was given operating control over the network operations. The replacement network, CA*net II, was launched based on NTN links and capacities, with OC-3 (155 Mbit/s) at the core. At the same time, Sympatico "DSL" service started, using the same technology. In 1998, CANARIE deployed CA*net 3, the world's first national optical research and education network, with a planned capacity of 2.5Gbit/s. In 2002, the Government of Canada committed $110 million to CANARIE to build and operate CA*net 4. CA*net 4 yielded a total network capacity of 40Gbit/s, 16 times its predecessor. CA*net 4 was based on OC-192 optical circuits, with a capability of offering users optical Lightpath services, a legacy dedicated point-to-point connection between research facilities.
CANARIE has funded the development of research software tools since 2007. In 2011, it took on the operations and support for the Canadian Access Federation, which provides participants with secure access to eduroam, an international federation of campus WiFi networks. The Canadian Access Federation also provides the trust framework to enable participants to access remote web-based datasets and tools in a secure and privacy-protecting environment. In 2011, it also launched the Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) program, which provides cloud computing resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Since 2014, it has provided financial support for Research Data Canada (RDC), an initiative focussed on developing the standards, policies and infrastructure to support reuse and preservation of research data. In 2014, CANARIE became a partner in the Centre in Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN), which supports the development and commercialization of next generation networking technologies. At the SuperComputing conference in Seattle, WA, in November 2011, CANARIE participated in the transfer of 1 petabyte of data between the California Institute of Technology and the University of Victoria at a combined rate of 186 Gbit/s, setting a world record. The CANARIE portion of the NREN consists of 23,000 km of fibre optic cable currently transferring data at speeds as high as 100 Gbit/s.
Status
In the year ending March 31, 2016, CANARIE transferred 172,000 Terabytes of data over the CANARIE network. Data traffic on the CANARIE network is growing at an average annual rate of ~50%.
As of 2016, institutions connected to the NREN include: 85 universities, 85 colleges, and 30 CEGEPS ; 85 federal government research labs; 46 teaching and research hospitals; 10 business incubators/accelerators;; Almost 5,500 K-12 schools; 12 provincial and territorial Regional Advanced Networks (RANs); and 100+ National Research and Education Networks around the world