Network Service Descriptions

CEN offers end-to-end wireless network solutions to ensure WiFi connectivity. We will design and configure your wireless network to meet modern demands of high capacity usage and good coverage. This modern managed WiFi solution allows you to measure performance in that coverage space and monitor usage (number of people online) at any given time. Our inclusive service is fully installed and monitored to ensure reliable coverage.

CEN offers dedicated transport services on our optical network connecting 19 locations around the state.
We are able to provide dedicated transport via optical transport network (OTN) providing Layer 1 point-to-point connectivity with 50ms restoration from path failures. These can be either 1G, 10G, or 100G handoff, single mode or multimode.

Dedicated ITU-T G.698.1 DWDM channel between locations on CEN's optical network. We are able to transport member information at a pure light wave level and is protocol-agnostic. This requires optics that are tuned to match specific frequencies.

CEN is actively working with NEREN on a connection into New York City. This summer, the RFP to replace the existing optical network between Hartford, Storrs, Rhode Island, Cambridge and Springfield was awarded to Cisco. In terms of CEN upgrades, we are working on a 100G ring from 300 Bent Street in Cambridge to Storrs, to 155 Locust Street/55 Farmington Avenue, down to New Haven and 60 Hudson Street in New York City, and back through Albany, New York, to Springfield, Massachusetts. Besides boosting capacity and reducing our overall costs to members, these upgrades will position CEN closer to big cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. This will allow CEN to expand our ability to directly connect our members with big cloud providers.

CEN provides a fully managed Domain Name System (DNS) hosting service to our members free of charge.

The DNS service can provide your primary record management and authoritative source for domain zones or act as a secondary/tertiary authoritative source for your zone. CEN is able to provide delegated access to your zone file so that you can leverage our service in managing your domains. The DNS service consists of highly available and fault tolerant DNS services spread out geographically across our backbone.

CEN is the administrator for the K12.CT.US

• IPv6 Support
• DNSSEC Support
• Anycast configuration for Highly Available
• Secure

The Connecticut Education Network (CEN) is the regional education network that reaches from Boston to New York and we leverage Internet2 to expand that reach nationally and internationally. Our core mission is to serve educational needs in CT and this includes researchers needs for high performance computing.

CEN provides centralized filtering services to all members. This service is included as part of our base ISP service offering for public K-12 members and libraries that use CEN as their ISP. The filtering platform is a CIPA compliant system which can be used to keep your organization in compliance with E-Rate requirements. CEN has contracted with iboss security to provide a cloud solution hosted within multiple CEN’s data centers. Members have the ability to log into a portal dedicated to their organization to manage filtering policies. Members also have the ability to purchase their own filter appliance, minus the cost of licensing which is covered by CEN currently through August 2018. Leveraging an internal district appliance allows for integration with the members domain server and more granular control over individual users.

CEN is able to offer managed or unmanaged cloud hosted firewall as an on demand, customized service.

Why use a CEN Firewall? A basic firewall controls the traffic that goes in and out of your network to protect you from hacking. CEN’s firewall service goes beyond this to offer Unified Threat Management covering Network Intrusion Prevention, Gateway Antivirus, Gateway Antispam, and Data Leak Prevention (DLP).

In addition, we can provide Network Address Translation, converting the limited amount of public IP addresses you have to a larger number of private IP addresses to give you network flexibility. We can help you transition to IPv6 from IPv4. Currently many users have an IPv4 address. IPv6 was designed to eventually replace IPv4 and allows for more Internet users to communicate with each other and utilize IPv6 only sites.