BCNET is a not-for-profit society that operates openly with disclosure to its Members, Affiliates and Partners. In addition to the BCNET Constitution and Bylaws, there are two documents that outline the policies and guidelines for appropriate participation in the society and for its network operations. These two documents are reviewed and updated regularly to keep pace with the changing technological environment.

BCNET Acceptable Use Policy Summary
The Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) outlines the requirements of participants in BCNET's Optical Regional Advanced Network (ORAN). The purpose of the BCNET ORAN is to further research and education in the province of British Columbia . All participants in the network should support this mandate and the vision and mission of the society.

There are two principles of use with regard to BCNET and the ORAN:

1. ORAN participants include BCNET Members and Research & Education Affiliates who have a research and education mandate. Members and Research & Education Affiliates have access to the ORAN, allowing connectivity to all other provincial ORAN participants and to all nationally and internationally approved education and research parties.
   
   
2. Transit Exchange (TX) participants include Network Affiliates who have access to other ORAN local loop participants but who do not have access to the entire provincial high-speed network. Any organization may participate in a local transit exchange.

Connection to the ORAN is restricted to BCNET Members and Research & Education Affiliates and is only possible at the five Transit Exchanges, which are located in Vancouver, Victoria, Kelown, Kamloops and Prince George. Local network access to the Transit Exchanges will be provided to BCNET Members. All traffic over the inter-city ORAN links destined to other approved research and education organizations in the province and those connected to similar national and international advanced networks will be allowed.

All ORAN participants and Transit Exchange participants must obtain commercial Internet transit services from one of the suppliers at the local TX. Commodity transit traffic, consisting of packets bound for destinations other than ORAN organizations, will not be allowed over inter-city ORAN links. BCNET will segregate the commercial Internet traffic from ORAN traffic at each Transit Exchange. ORAN traffic consists of packets originating from and destined to approved research and education facilities in the province, across the country and worldwide.