John J. Buxbaum writes:
Mark,
You have been told by the State who you have to use as a provider?
If not an outright mandate, the "auxiliary funding" provided to each campus
for information infrastructure upgrades was an offer too good to refuse.
CSUnet/4Cnet is a state-created and funded entity serving public educational
institutions within the state of California.
Quoting from http://www.4c.net/4CNet_mission.html:
In 1984, the California State University (CSU) system established "CSUnet",
a dedicated data network linking each of the campuses of the CSU. The
network was created as one of several efforts to meet the increasing
information technology demands of the University system and its campuses
throughout the State. CSUnet continually modified and expanded its
programmatic functions and technical resources to keep current with
state-of-the-art inter-network services and applications. CSUnet's purpose
has been to serve the University's academic and administrative mission,
goals and objectives in ways that exploit centralized and distributed
information resources.
The State of California authorized auxiliary funding in the 1996-97 fiscal
year to the California Community Colleges (CCC) "to assure that each of the
125 (campus and district office) sites have established necessary
infrastructure capability for teleconferencing, connections to CSUnet and
satellite downlink" capabilities.
In response to this funding allocation, the CSU and CCC have implemented a
working relationship to create the California State University and Community
College Network, 4Cnet. The role of 4CNet expands the role of CSUnet to
the Community College Environment. It is the purpose of 4Cnet to serve the
academic and administrative mission goals an objectves in ways that exploit
centralized and distributed information resources for the separate and
combined California State Universities and Community Colleges.