Benefits of MDREN Membership:

Networking Partner – MDREN partners with its members to provide the internet network services that they need and to help with advice concerning LAN issues and design. We extend your networking team.

Connectivity and Redundancy – MDREN provides redundant Internet services to 25 colleges and universities in Maryland. We offer redundant campus connections ranging from 1GB to 100GB and connections to three upstream ISPs. We provide services across the entire state of Maryland and have fiber partnerships with public and private wide-area network providers. Over the past 5 years, we have had 99.99 uptime.

Community – Our members can actively participate in MDREN’s strategic direction including resource allocation, technology selection, and budget planning. Through our membership’s collective expertise, MDREN members can adopt new effective technologies that offer cost savings and efficiency opportunities that would not be possible without a vested membership community.

Collaboration – MDREN members enjoy the benefits of collaboration: sharing expertise, best practices, and resources with other members. Campus network managers meet monthly with MDREN engineers to discuss their strategic directions and challenges.

Cost Savings – MDREN provides affordable ISP and networking services and leverages multiple public and private network partnerships to meet members where they are and will be. Because MDREN is a part of the Maryland higher education community we can connect people as well as campuses.

DDoS Mitigation – MDREN monitors network activity, detects any DDoS anomalies, and mitigates within 30 seconds.

Events – MDREN sponsors an annual retreat and other workshops at which members can learn from their peers, the MDREN team, and commercial partners.

Peering – MDREN can provide high-speed peering between its members for research and educational purposes. We also provide members with peering with Netflix, Google, and Facebook to provide direct connections and lower traffic costs.

Internet2 – MDREN is a member of Internet2 and provides access to qualified members. Internet2 benefits include NetPlus purchasing, Eduroam, Cloud Connect, and InCommon.

Distance Learning Support – we provide connectivity through our video bridge to multiple campuses or locations enabling distributed group and individual video services.