Juniper Networks Selected to Receive the CENIC 2024 Innovations in Networking Award for Corporate Partner

CENIC is pleased to select Juniper Networks to receive its 2024 Innovations in Networking Award for Corporate Partner in recognition of its product innovations, responsiveness, and the extraordinary value and cost savings Juniper has facilitated for CENIC and its community.

Juniper's Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) provides value and impressive features to CENIC's membership. Significant discounts on 400 Gbps line cards enable members to take advantage of CENIC's ongoing 400 Gbps backbone upgrade program while saving the membership millions of dollars. And due to its close collaboration with CENIC, Juniper CPE deliveries continued during the COVID-19 pandemic when connectivity was so vital.

"Our mission at Juniper is to make every connection count through highly scalable, highly automated, and highly secure AI-native networks. We are proud of our longstanding partnership with like-minded CENIC to connect the nation's top research and education institutions to advance innovation, collaboration, and economic growth," said Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim. "I am incredibly grateful to receive this recognition and look forward to continuing to enable CENIC's mission with world-class networking solutions."

In addition, when issues with Protocol-Independent Multicast impacted traffic over CENIC's California Research and Education Network (CalREN) in March 2023, Juniper's rapid escalation of the issue to the highest executive level and subsequent software updates spoke volumes about the company's appreciation of the common work it shares with CENIC and the importance of the CENIC community's missions.

"Juniper's close collaboration with CENIC to mitigate pandemic-caused supply chain disruptions and their willingness to escalate critical issues to the highest possible level and work closely with us on solutions, have been clear demonstrations of the shared values held by our two organizations," stated Louis Fox, CENIC's Chief Executive Officer.

CENIC Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Tony Nguyen agrees, stating, "CENIC's partnership with Juniper has provided our members with resilient and robust networking solutions from an established industry leader with the innovation and agility of a start-up. This collaboration strengthens CENIC's mission of advancing research and education in California."

Juniper's support for the Pacific Wave international distributed peering exchange further highlights its appreciation of the impact of R&E networking on global scientific partnerships and innovation. Juniper's help with Pacific Wave's 400 Gbps upgrade ensured time- and cost-efficient benefits for researchers in North America and their partners in the Asia-Pacific Region and Oceania.

About CENIC | www.cenic.org

CENIC connects California to the world?advancing education and research statewide by providing the world-class network essential for innovation, collaboration, and economic growth. This nonprofit organization operates the California Research and Education Network (CalREN), a high-capacity network designed to meet the unique requirements of over 20 million users, including the vast majority of K-20 students together with educators, researchers and others at vital public-serving institutions. CENIC's Charter Associates are part of the world's largest education system; they include the California K-12 system, California Community Colleges, the California State University system, California's Public Libraries, the University of California system, Stanford, Caltech, USC, and the Naval Postgraduate School. CENIC also provides connectivity to leading-edge institutions and industry research organizations around the world, serving the public as a catalyst for a vibrant California.

About Pacific Wave | pacificwave.net

Pacific Wave (PacWave) is a distributed, Research and Education (R&E)-focused, open Internet exchange. It provides for very high-performance Internet connectivity among US Science and Engineering R&E institutions and their international partners and is critical infrastructure for access to internationally supported instruments and large-scale data sources and repositories.

Pacific Wave enables large-scale scientific workflows to accelerate discovery in all areas of science and engineering, including high-energy physics, Earth sciences, astronomy and astrophysics, biology, and biomedical engineering, as well as scalable visualization, virtual reality, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Pacific Wave is a joint project of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) with support from the National Science Foundation.