San Diego State University (SDSU) has become the first member of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the first research institution to achieve a 800 Gbps connection to a high-performance research and education network, the university announced today.

The connection is to the CENIC California Research and Education Network (CalREN), a project that was made possible through collaboration between CENIC, SDSU, and the California State University system, as well as with Juniper Networks.

Additional similar high-speed connections are expected in the future. As other research and education institutions begin to connect at this speed, CENIC member institutions will become the premier collaboration partners of choice in global big-data disciplines, a CENIC press release said.

According to CENIC, the deployment of Juniper’s PTX10002 packet transport routers have enabled a native 800 Gbps speeds at SDSU on geographically suitable, heavily used backbone paths.

“With the leadership of San Diego State University, guided by James Frazee (Vice President of Information Technology and CIO), and the California State University Chancellor’s Office organized by Kendra Ard (Chief Infrastructure Officer), and with strong support from our partner Juniper Networks, another R&E networking milestone has been achieved: a native 800 Gbps connection to the CENIC network,” said CENIC CEO Louis Fox in a prepared statement.

“With the data-hungry bandwidth demands of AI, cloud computing, global-scale scientific instruments, and large data-sharing collaborations, SDSU is well-prepared to meet these challenges. Virtualization and containerization for incredibly rapid transmission of data between virtual machines, containers, and cloud computing users will support complex visualizations and analysis of massive data sources.

The announcement said that the 800 Gbps connection would have “environmental impacts and cost savings because of reduced power and space demands in data centers and co-location facilities.”

“This milestone reflects SDSU’s commitment to advancing research and education through next-generation infrastructure — our new 800 Gbps connection positions us to lead in data-intensive fields like AI, climate science, and real-time global collaboration,” said SDSU Vice President of Information Technology and CIO James Frazee in the announcement.