The epidemic is the order, and the prevention and control is the responsibility! In the battle without gunpowder, CERNET complies with the needs of the country and resolutely implements the decisions and deployments of the CPC and the State Council on the prevention and control of the epidemic. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Education, CERNET bravely shoulders heavy responsibilities, reacts quickly, remains in position, and performs its duties with due diligence. In this special period, CERNET fully assumes the important role of the national information infrastructure and spares no effort to provide high-speed, smooth, safe and reliable network guarantees. At the same time, CERNET also provides high-quality video conferencing systems, rich global academic resources for colleges and universities, and comprehensively escort the informatization of teaching and research in colleges and universities.
One responsibility: emergency response to ensure a smooth network
January 23, the day before the Lunar New Year's Eve. Due to the COVID-19, Wuhan announced the closure of the city.
After learning the news, Wu Jianping, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the CERNET Network Center, quickly sent a WeChat message to Yu Junqing: "Everyone is very concerned about the epidemic in Wuhan. Please extend my cordial greetings to the CERNET Wuhan network node. I wish everyone safe! And I hope you could remain at your posts, ensure the CERNET network remains unblocked, and work with the people across the country to defeat the epidemic! If there is any need for support, please inform us promptly."
Yu Junqing is the director of the CERNET Central China Region and the director of the Cyberspace Administration of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He immediately replied: "Thank you, Teacher Wu, for your regards. We will spare no efforts in performing our duties!"
As the country's key information infrastructure for education and scientific research, CERNET's rapid response in major emergencies is an instinct. Although it is not the first major emergency in the more than 20 years history of CERNET, the city closure due to the epidemic has never happened before. The situation is beyond imagination.
As of 24:00 on January 24, on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, Hubei has implemented lockdowns in 11 regions including Wuhan, Huanggang, and Xiaogan, and at least 12 provinces including Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, and Hubei have initiated a first-level emergency response.
With the spread of COVID-19 to the whole country, the general public are required to stay at home and try not to go out. Many places have even blocked roads and set up policy barriers to prevent the flow of people.
When the isolation of physical space becomes an important means to stop the epidemic, the connection of cyberspace becomes a magic weapon to support the operation of society. The Internet has become the main stage for people to live, study and work. Under such circumstances, the network must not be disconnected!
On New Year's Eve, Academician Wu Jianping was busy at the CERNET network center as always, understanding the status of the entire network, deploying security units, and doing his best to ensure the smooth and safe network.
On the same day, Chen Xu, Secretary of the Party Committee of Tsinghua University, also came to the CERNET Network Center to cheer up the staff on duty.
At around 8 o'clock that evening, Wang Yongfei, an employee of the Jilin branch of CERNET company was celebrating with his family in front of the TV to have a New Year's Eve dinner, and suddenly received a fault notification call from the network node. He subconsciously put down the dumplings he just picked up, put on his clothes and a mask, rushed out the door. After more than an hour of emergency repairs, and the network had returned to normal, Wang finally dragged his tired body back home.
In these days of reunion, too many people in CERNET and local network nodes, remain at their posts for responsibility, fearless of the epidemic.
Four measures: Provide network guarantee for online education
Schools have always been the focus and difficulty of epidemic prevention and control. For the education system, according to conventional arrangements, the spring semester starts right after the Spring Festival. How to arrange it has become the biggest problem.
In order to ensure the safety of teachers and students, the Ministry of Education has been continuously deploying measures since January 27. "Notice on the extension of the 2020 spring semester" was issued, and the policy of "suspending classes without stopping teaching" was issued.
On February 6, the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Supporting Education and Teaching with Informatization during the Period of Epidemic Prevention and Control." The notice requires that education informatization should be done in a solid manner to support the smooth development of online teaching during the postponement of the school. Among the five main tasks listed in the notice, the top one is to improve network support conditions.
The notice proposes that the Ministry of Education organizes CERNET and major telecommunications companies to strengthen the provision of network services to educational platforms and schools at all levels and types.
The epidemic is the order, the prevention and control is the responsibility. As an important infrastructure for education informatization in China, it is CERNET's biggest political task to provide the best network guarantee for the epidemic prevention and control of user units.
On February 6, CERNET issued a "Letter to All Users" to 2000 colleges and universities across the country. The letter promised to high-speed, unobstructed, safe and reliable network services for teaching and scientific research and launched four specific measures.
First, network quality. It is necessary to focus on ensuring the high-quality interconnection of CERNET and CERNET2 backbone networks at home and abroad, making them a "national online teaching information highway" between various schools and student families across the country.
Second, network bandwidth. During the epidemic, the bandwidth requirements of CERNET user units and CERNET and CERNET2 backbone networks will be adjusted for free, and the application procedures will be simplified.
The third, network security. Strictly abide by national laws and regulations, ensure the network security operation and management of the backbone network and user units during the epidemic, and expeditiously deal with the network security management needs of various user units such as domain name registration, ICP filing, and IP address application.
Fourth, overall planning and coordination. For the CERNET network center and the backbone network core node operation and maintenance system distributed in 41 colleges and universities, as well as the user service system of CERNET company and 31 branches, strengthen overall coordination and command dispatch to achieve coordinated linkage and rapid response.
At the same time, as the operator of CERNET, CERNET company established a leading group for epidemic prevention and control, with 8 working groups including user service, network operation guarantee, and technical support to respond to changes in the epidemic and quickly understand the user's network needs, to achieve effective scheduling, and perform its best.
After the letter was sent, CERNET's node network center, CERNET company and its branches in various regions have used various effective channels to connect to user units in the first time, strengthen user communication, understand network needs, and ensure service quality.
Eight requirements: move upon orders and enter the wartime management
The day when the first batch of colleges and universities start online courses on February 17 is getting closer. There is no precedent for such a large-scale online teaching before, and there is not much experience over the nation. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a large experiment covering the whole country.
In order to fully guarantee the network, CERNET urgently convened a video conference of the expert committee on February 12 to deploy CERNET network guarantees, video systems, and resource sharing.
February 15th, Saturday. CERNET issued the "Emergency Notice on Implementing CERNET Network Guarantee during the Period of Epidemic Prevention and Control" to 41 core nodes of the backbone network. The notice clearly stated that the CERNET network guarantee work is subject to the unified deployment of the Ministry of Education and the CERNET Management Committee, and the CERNET Network Center is specifically responsible for its implementation.
In the morning of the same day, at the CERNET command center in the FIT building of Tsinghua University, Wu Jianping presided over a video conference with the director of the backbone network core nodes for emergency mobilization and deployment.
"In order to ensure that colleges and universities fully carry out the needs of online teaching, CERNET network security enters wartime management!" Wu Jianping announced loudly.
For the network guarantee for epidemic prevention and control, the CERNET Network Center puts forward eight major requirements: improve political awareness; obey unified leadership and coordinate rapid response; supervisors lead shifts and operators stay on duty; strengthen safety protection and maintain healthy; Strict operation and maintenance specifications to ensure smooth network; strengthen network monitoring to implement key guarantees; strengthen safety management to troubleshoot hidden troubles; implement a daily reporting system to ensure timely communication.
Among them, it is particularly emphasized that all nodes are required to fully understand the importance, uniqueness and complexity of the CERNET network security work during the epidemic prevention and control period, and to enhance political awareness, overall awareness and sense of responsibility.
On February 17, the first batch of colleges and universities started online classes as scheduled.
In the CERNET Command Center, Wu Jianping arrived work early in the morning to supervise the network
This morning, after two investigations on January 24 and February 7, Chen Xu, Secretary of the Party Committee of Tsinghua University, came to the CERNET Network Center again.
After listening to the report of Academician Wu Jianping, Secretary Chen Xu affirmed the spirit of CERNET Network Center to face difficulties and do a good job of informatization protection, and hoped that CERNET Network Center will make long-term planning and overall arrangements.
This is trust and exhortation. The strategy of serving the country is the foundation of CERNET, and the needs of the country are the first task of CERNET. At this point, CERNET has no hesitation and has never wavered!
In order to ensure the smooth development of online teaching work, as of February 29, CERNET has upgraded 348 user units for free access bandwidth, increasing the total bandwidth by 141G.
Considering that students are located across the country, accessing to school resources will become a great demand. The CERNET network center promptly issued a document to China Telecom and China Unicom to promote the expansion of interconnection bandwidth with the three major operators in key domestic cities.
In addition, CERNET Network Center and CERNET company take precautions, make timely predictions for the spread of the epidemic, actively made network resource allocation and equipment preparations, implemented the protection plan, and counted the materials and equipment required for protection. In view of the situation where the Wuhan node is in the hardest-hit area, special guarantee preparations have been made.
Two types of applications: provide video service systems and share global academic resources
In addition to providing a solid network guarantee for online education and teaching, CERNET was also anxious for users during the epidemic, and launched two types of applications for colleges and universities. The first is to launch a high-quality video conferencing system to meet the online teaching needs of colleges and universities, and the second is to launch a global academic resource sharing service to provide resources for colleges and universities to fight against the epidemic.
Objectively speaking, in an education system that relies on campuses and classrooms, online teaching is often just an auxiliary method. The online teaching carried out by the education system this time, its large-scale concurrent access to video, is a huge challenge for both the network and the system. Some video platforms are overwhelmed and interrupted repeatedly, seriously affecting the smooth progress of online teaching.
How to effectively solve this problem - is there a better online video teaching system? The urgent need of the school is the mission of CERNET.
CERNET quickly established an expert guidance group and a working group. Academician Wu Jianping personally took command, and Professor Li Xing of Tsinghua University served as a technological pioneer, researching and finding solutions. Based on the analysis of the use environment and actual needs, as well as the comparison of the pros and cons of various online teaching and video systems, the ZOOM video system first entered the field of vision of the technical team.
Thanks to the company's founder Yuan Zheng's accumulation of more than 20 years in the field of video conferencing research and development, ZOOM, which was born in 2011, quickly defeated Cisco's webex due to its excellent ease of use and stability in just a few years. Zoom has also surpassed established competitors such as Microsoft's Skype and others to become one of the world's best video conferencing systems.
Based on their respective strong technical backgrounds and the special situation of the spread of the epidemic, the negotiations between CERNET and ZOOM went very smoothly. The two sides hit it off and jointly launched a large-scale video conference platform and service zoom.edu.cn to support online teaching and research in colleges and universities, which will be exempt during the epidemic. Fees, unlimited time.
With the vigorous promotion of CERNET in the education system, more and more colleges and universities have carried out online teaching and video conferences through zoom.edu.cn. Its stable audio and video quality and friendly user interface are also widely praised by educated users.
In addition, CERNET also has close contact with other well-known domestic video service providers to discuss cooperation matters in order to provide diversified choices for online teaching in colleges and universities.
In addition to the demand for online teaching platforms, university teachers and students also encountered difficulties in scientific research during the epidemic prevention and control period. Teachers and students of colleges and universities were originally on campus, and because of the campus network IP addressing, they can access global academic resources, but how can teachers and students who are now at home access these resources conveniently and quickly during the epidemic?
In order to solve this problem, CERNET released the global academic resource sharing service-CARSI after ZOOM.
As part of the National Next Generation Internet Demonstration Project, CARSI is a project initiated by Peking University, organized and managed by the CERNET Network Center, Peking University Computing Center R&D and provide technical support, providing federal certification for universities and scientific research institutions that have established unified identity certification. This allows the sharing of services with global academic information resources.
The emergence of CARSI has completely changed the limitation that users could only use the IP address of their units for free access to the global academic information resources. With CARSI personnel of universities and scientific research institutes can pass the federal identity certification and can conveniently enjoy discounts anytime and anywhere. CARSI also allows free access to global academic information resources.
CARSI started development in December 2008 and successfully joined eduGAIN, a multinational identity alliance organization, in May 2019. It has allowed resource sharing with more than 60 countries, including more than 2,600 academic information resource providers worldwide.
After the outbreak of the pandemic, in order to meet the needs of university teachers and students for home-based scientific research, Peking University and CERNET company and other undertaking units have accelerated CARSI resource coverage while actively expanding services to universities. CERNET has also simplified the application process for those universities and service providers joining CARSI, speeding up application and opening services, and helping schools quickly complete service commissioning and launching.
CARSI now has access to more than 400 universities with shared educational and scientific research resources. The resources accessed include 11 well-known overseas database vendors such as Clarivate Analytics and Elsevier, as well as two major domestic Chinese database vendors ( CNKI and Wanfang). Access to academic resource libraries cover over 140,000 Chinese and foreign journals, plus 10,000 experiments and teaching videos.
Professor Zhang Bei, a member of the CERNET Expert Committee and director of the Peking University Computing Center, pointed out: "The release and promotion of CARSI is an important measure for CERNET to expand resource services and support the development of scientific research and teaching in universities with information technology. With the organization and support of CERNET, Peking University Computing The close collaboration between the center and CERNET company has enhanced the depth and breadth of CARSI services, and played an active and key role in scientific research during the epidemic in my country's universities."
A teacher from the Information Technology Center of Zhejiang University said: "CARSI is great! It is a powerful tool for accessing databases outside the school, and we have benefited deeply!" After many universities have tried CARSI, they have announced that they do not need a VPN to access CNKI and Wanfang.
Serve wholeheartedly: shoulder the national mission and show the responsibility of the times
Take precautions and respond quickly; send a letter to promise, coordinate and mobilize; network escort, application guarantee...In the face of severe epidemics, in a short period of time, CERNET is compact and deployed in place, which has been unanimously recognized by users.
There is no other reason. Conforming to national needs and serving the national strategy is the inherent mission of CERNET.
In order to keep up with the pace of the information age, the original State Planning Commission approved the construction of the CERNET project in 1994, which also opened the prelude to the development of the Internet in my country; in order to seize the trend of key Internet technologies, my country began the development of the next generation Internet in 2003, and CERNET assumed Build the largest core network CNGI-CERNET2/6IX.
For more than 20 years, the development of CERNET has kept pace with the pulse of the country and the times, and the prosperity of the country is also the guarantee for the development and growth of CERNET. Because of this innate mission, CERNET often shows enough responsibility in emergencies.
In 2003, SARS struck. While ensuring the smooth flow of the network, CERNET urgently built the "National Education Emergency Video Conference System" and launched the online enrolment consulting service system to ensure the stable operation of the education system, especially the smooth progress of high-level recruitment.
In 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake. CERNET was fully deployed at the first time and worked hard day and night. The staff of CERNET's southwest node, regardless of the danger to their lives, stuck to the dangerous city to ensure the smooth flow of the network "lifeline".
This time the new crown epidemic, CERNET, as always, with a high sense of responsibility, always sticks to its position, tries to solve problems, meets the needs of users, and successfully completes the guarantee tasks assigned by the state.
At 17:25 on February 12th, CERNET Shaanxi Branch detected a sudden failure of the CERNET Weiyang Lake node. After investigation, it was found that the viaduct construction party was forced to cut the communication optical cable during the construction period. The construction staff fled after learning of the alarm on site. The drill bit of the drilling rig got stuck in the pipeline well again, making it impossible to repair.
At that time, the epidemic situation was very severe. Enterprises were prohibited from resuming work, people were isolated at home, and intersections were strictly investigated. In order to ensure that the school's business resumes as soon as possible, the branch company had repeatedly communicated and coordinated with multiple parties to force the manager of the viaduct construction party to arrive at the site and arrange for the drill bit to be withdrawn from the trench. After a race against time and overnight temporary repairs, the network of the node-related colleges and universities quickly returned to normal.
In the face of the epidemic, CERNET network center and CERNET company all staff turned on their mobile phones 24 hours a day to ensure timely response to user needs. Each branch of CERNET took the initiative to learn about the user's network usage during the epidemic, solicit users' opinions and suggestions, and deal with problems in a timely manner.
There is no winter that cannot be passed, and no spring that will not arrive. CERNET will inherit the tradition of "conforming to the national strategy, uniting and fighting hard", and carrying forward the spirit of CERNET in 2003 of the national "fighting SARS". Together with the people of the whole country, and all users, CERNET will overcome the difficulties and resolutely win this battle against COVID-19.
(This article was published in the February-March 2020 joint issue of "China Education Network". The author is the reporter Wang Shixin of this journal)
