Cort Buffington, Lawrence, has been appointed to the position of Executive Director of the Kansas
Research and Education Network (KanREN, Inc.), the KanREN Board of Directors announced at
their June meeting. His position became official on July 1, 2008 after serving as interim director
since January 1, 2008. Matt Fuoco, Director of Telecommunications and Networking for KU
Medical Center and KanREN Board Chair remarked, “for over ten years Cort has been a computer
networking visionary where he has helped to shape data communications for our members. The
Board is excited to have Cort accept the position of Executive Director of KanREN.”
KanREN is a Lawrence-based, not-for-profit corporation serving the stateʼs research, education
and networking technology needs since 1994. KanREN operates as a consortium of state
universities, private colleges, community colleges, libraries and school districts to provide
networking engineering, data communication and educational technology direction to all members.
Their state-wide network backbone and connections to both commercial commodity Internet
service and Internet 2 ensures the highest quality data communication and connectivity for Kansas
students at all levels and membersʼ community patrons.
A native of Frontenac, Kansas, Buffington has served KanREN and the state/regional educational
networking community for over 10 years. In 1994 he received his degree from Pittsburg State
University in Engineering Technology and has worked in the technology and education field since
that time. Buffington currently serves on several professional groups at the state, regional and
national level promoting network design and engineering best practices.
KanREN, Inc. is a major partner with other state networking organizations such as Kan-ed and
Division of Information System and Communications (DISC), plus commercial relationships relating
to the field of data communications such as Sunflower Broadband, AT&T, and Cox
Communications. Locally, KanREN is a member of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce.

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KanREN has scheduled its Annual Meeting for Monday, April 14th, 2008 from 1:00pm until 3:00pm.

This Annual Meeting will have four satelite sites:

• NOC (Lawrence, KS)
• Fort Hays State University
• Pittsburg State University
• Wichita State University

Please check the Annual Meeting webpage for directions and additional information.

KanREN has called a special member meeting scheduled for Wednesday, December 19th 2007 beginning at 1:30pm.

A special page has been setup for this event and pertinent documents can be found there as they are finalized.

Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 4:00pm KanREN deployed the first router on the new backbone with assistance from Richard Becker from Kansas State University.

The new router is a Foundry NetIron 4000 XMR. Transitioning services to the new router was overall very painless… the only problems being a) a forgotten BGP peering password and b) a platform difference between other Foundry products.

Check out the pictures taken during the day.

Registrations for the 2007 Annual Meeting are now being accepted. Please visit our Annual Meeting page at http://www.kanren.net/events/annual_meeting/ to register and to view additional meeting information.

HITS 2007 – Higher Education IT Security Conference

Security 504: Hacker Techniques, Exploits, and Incident Handling

KanREN cut over to its new website on January 27, 2007. Questions or comments? Email the Webmaster.

KanREN has lowered its I1 bandwidth price from $95/mb/mo. to $75/mb/mo effective January 1, 2007. Credits will be issued on 4th quarter billing.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Shannon O’Connor
Kansas Research and Education Network (KanREN, Inc)
1405 Wakarusa, Suite B
Lawrence, KS 66049
785-856-9800 (voice)
785-856-1377 (FAX)
oconnor@kanren.net
http://www.kanren.net

Lawrence Non-Profit Corporation Donates Bandwidth to Stream Kansas State Supreme Court Hearing Live on May 11, 2005

Lawrence, Kansas, May 6, 2005 — When the Kansas State Supreme Court justices hear oral arguments about school finance, anyone with an Internet connection can watch the events live through a streaming server that uses 200Mbps of Internet 1 bandwidth donated by a Lawrence non-profit consortium, the Kansas Research and Education Network (KanREN, Inc.). This is a joint effort among KanREN, Kan-Ed and ESSDACK (Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas) to bring such an important hearing to the public.

KanREN operates a state-wide public network with six points of presence across the state. Multiple connections, providers and redundant links enable KanREN to provide the 200 Mbps service for one day without interrupting or decreasing service to any of the eighty institutions in the state connected to KanREN’s backbone. The Kan-Ed Live! streaming server will be set to allow 500 connections at one time, but the event will be archived and available for viewing on demand after the event is over. Instructions for accessing the stream are available via the Kansas Judicial Branch Web site, http://www.kscourts.org.

Kan-Ed, the state-funded private network facilitating video collaboration among the state’s public institutions, contracts with ESSDACK to operate the Kan-Ed Live! system where the video stream will be archived, and contracts with KanREN for network operations services. This event epitomizes the public/private partnerships Kan-Ed was organized to facilitate.

KanREN, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is an independent, non-profit consortium of colleges, universities, school districts, libraries and other organizations in Kansas for the purpose of providing dedicated connectivity to the Internet and advanced network services on behalf of its members. KanREN operates a state-wide private backbone network of .5 Gbps I1, and is the exclusive Internet 2 connector for the state. Members also benefit from technological innovation, partnership and advocacy at the local, state, and federal level.

Oral arguments begin promptly at 9:30am on Wednesday, May 11. PBS out of Topeka will also be taping the event for later broadcast.

As of March 14th KanREN is peered with 3 different Internet providers in such a way that there is no need for manual intervention to fail over if one Internet provider goes down. There is also sufficient available bandwidth to ensure that any failover will occur with very little impact on our member’s Internet performance.

This was a huge undertaking and the engineering staff is excited to have the last piece or two in place to make it happen. This will make the Internet 1 service we provide to our members much more reliable and will make a failure of one of our Internet Service Providers nearly transparent to the end users.

This change will have 3 major implications for those of you monitoring the health of the network. First, area code boundaries no longer apply when thinking about where your traffic will be routed. For example, if you are in the 620 area code and traffic is not passing through Wichita (SBC) there is not necessarily a problem. Second, occasional instances of asymmetric routing are normal and do not indicate a problem. Third, and most important, everyone will experience less downtime since your network is now much more robust.