CANARIE has issued an RFP to ensure continued availability of CAnet 4 and its successor network beyond the current mandate. As mentioned previously, the Federal budget proposes $120M in funding for CANARIE.
While the current architecture is designed to provide researchers with a national backbone and certain global connections, it will be interesting to see if CANARIE (or others) will develop a mandate to lead Canada’s participation in research to examine architectural frameworks for internet evolution.