NEW INTERCONTINENTAL INTERNET PERFORMANCE RECORDS SET IN INTERNET2 LAND
SPEED RECORD COMPETITION
Washington, DC -- January 20, 2003 -- An international team set new
Internet2 Land Speed Records by transferring 6.7 gigabytes of data
across 10,978 kilometers (more than 6,800 miles) of network in less than
one minute. Using a quantity of data equivalent to nearly two
feature-length DVD-quality movies, the transfer was accomplished at an
average speed of more than 923 megabits per second, or more than 3500
times faster than a typical home broadband connection, during the SC2002
conference held 16-22 November 2002.
The record setting team consisted of members from the Nationaal
Instituut voor Kernfysica en Hoge-Energiefysica (NIKHEF), the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), the California Institute of Technology
(Caltech) and the Faculty of Science of the Universiteit van Amsterdam
(UvA). In setting the new record, the team used the advanced networking
capabilities of TeraGrid, StarLight, SURFnet, NetherLight, and the wide
area optical networking links provided by Level 3 Communications
(Nasdaq:LVLT) or the SC2002 event and by Cisco Systems to SLAC and
Caltech. The team also received indispensable support from the CERN staff.
Antony Antony, researcher at NIKHEF said, "This record demonstrates that
the protocols that form the foundation of the commercial Internet can
support gigabit per second speeds over transcontinental network links,
even if routinely realizing this kind of performance under 'real world'
conditions still requires much research."
Les Cottrell, assistant director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center Computer Services added, "By exploring the edges of Internet
technologies' performance envelope, we are improving our understanding
and ability to implement new networking technologies that will bring
high-speed data transfer to practical everyday applications, such as
doctors at multiple sites sharing and discussing a patient's
cardio-angiographs to diagnose and plan treatment, or disaster recovery
experts sharing information across the globe in near real-time to
develop recovery and relief plans."
Kees Neggers, managing director of SURFnet said, "Following on the
successful iGrid 2002 event held in Amsterdam last year, I am pleased
to see the record set during SC2002. While iGrid 2002 was a landmark in
networking in the sense that bandwidth was no longer a limitation for
the participants, I am glad to see users catching up so quickly."
Harvey Newman, professor of physics at Caltech, said, "The efficient use
of long distance networks at gigabit per second speeds is vital for the
future of the high energy and nuclear physics (HENP) community. The
largest HENP experiments are already dealing with data stores
approaching the petabyte range and we expect this to increase by a
factor of 1000 over the next decade. This demonstration of gigabit per
second speeds over a network already nearly at full occupancy—and over
intercontinental distances—is an important milestone in our development
of facilities and protocols needed to support the data analysis needs,
and thus the scientific mission, of emerging experimental programs in
high energy physics."
Cees de Laat, researcher at the Faculty of Science of the University of
Amsterdam and member of the Grid Forum Steering Group noted, "This
result shows that we are approaching network performance which, for the
first time, will enable international scientific collaborations to share
and access the massive databases that are nowadays common in fields such
as particle physics, astronomy, biology, seismology. These capabilities
will supplant the shipping of literally truck-loads of data storage
tapes that is currently required to move data."
The entry established both single and multiple stream records by setting
a mark of 9,891.60 terabit meters per second. Standard PC hardware
running Debian GNU/LINUX in Amsterdam and RedHat Linux in Sunnyvale,
California was used in the effort. The entry was judged on a combination
of bandwidth used and distance covered, end-to-end, using standard
Internet (TCP/IP) protocols.
The Internet2 Land Speed Record is an open and ongoing competition.
Details of the winning entries, complete rules, submission guidelines
and additional details are available at: http://lsr.internet2.edu/
The team gratefully acknowledges support from the project DataTAG, a
project sponsored by the European Commission (EU Grant IST-2001-32459),
and the Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics Division (DoE Contract
No. DE-AC03-76SF00515), and the Advanced Scientific Computing Research
(together with the PPDG collaboratory pilot), Mathematical, Information,
and Computational Sciences Division both under the U.S. Department of
Energy.
About NIKHEF
NIKHEF is the national institute for subatomic physics in The
Netherlands. It also coordinates subatomic physics research of various
university groups in the country. NIKHEF researchers participate in
experiments at accelerator institutes like CERN in Geneva, Fermilab in
Batavia, Illinois, Desy in Hamburg, Germany and SLAC in Stanford,
California. Through participation in large international collaborations
at widely distributed places, NIKHEF has a long experience in high
performance networking and houses one of the major network hubs in Europe. http://www.nikhef.nl/
About Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is one of the world 's
leading research laboratories. Its mission is to design, construct and
operate state-of-the-art electron accelerators and related experimental
facilities for use in high-energy physics and synchrotron radiation
research. In the course of doing so, it has established the largest
known database in the world, which grows at 1 Terabyte per day. That,
and its central role in the world of high energy physics collaboration,
places SLAC at the forefront of the international drive to optimize the
world-wide, high-speed transfer of bulk data. http://www.slac.stanford.edu/
About Caltech
With an outstanding faculty, including four Nobel laureates, and such
off-campus facilities as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Palomar
Observatory, and the W.M.Keck Observatory, the California Institute of
Technology is one of the world's major research centers. The Institute
also conducts instruction in science and engineering for a student body
of approximately 900 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students who
maintain a high level of scholarship and intellectual achievement
Caltech's 124-acre campus is situated in Pasadena, California, a city of
135,000 at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, approximately 30 miles
inland from the Pacific Ocean and 10 miles northeast of the Los Angeles
Civic Center. Caltech is an independent, privately supported university,
and is not affiliated with either the University of California system or
the California State Polytechnic universities. http://www.caltech.edu
About Faculty of Science of Universiteit van Amsterdam
The Advanced Internet Research group of the University of Amsterdam's
Faculty of Science researches new architectures and protocols for the
Internet. It actively participates in world-wide standardization
organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Global
Grid Forum. The group conducts experiments with extremely high-speed
network infrastructures. The Institute carries out ground-breaking
research in the fields of security, authorization, authentication and
accounting for Grid environments. The Institute is developing a virtual
laboratory based on Grid technology for e-science applications. http://www.science.uva.nl/research/air/
About SURFnet and GigaPort
SURFnet operates and innovates the national research network, to which
150 institutions in higher education and research in the Netherlands are
connected. To remain in the lead, SURFnet puts in a sustained effort to
improve the infrastructure and to develop new applications to give users
faster and better access to new Internet services. SURFnet is partner in
GigaPort, a project of the Dutch government, trade and industry,
educational institutions and research institutes, which aims to give the
Netherlands a head start in the development and use of advanced and
innovative Internet technology.
Contacts:
Greg Wood
Internet2
ghwood@internet2.edu
+1 202-331-5360
Jacques Visser
NIKHEF
jacques@nikhef.nl
+31 20 592 200
Les Cottrell
Computing Services, SLAC
cottrell@SLAC.Stanford.EDU
+1 650-926-2523
Harvey B. Newman
High Energy Physics Department, Caltech
newman@hep.caltech.edu
+1 626-395-6656
Cees de Laat
Faculty of Science, Informatics Institute, UvA delaat@science.uva.nl
+31 20 525 7590
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