NEXT GENERATION INTERNET PROTOCOL MARKS SHATTERED IN INTERNET2 LAND SPEED RECORD COMPETITION

IPv6 Single and Multi-Stream Categories Near One Gigabit per Second

WASHINGTON, DC – An international team set new Internet2 Land Speed Records using next generation Internet Protocols (IPv6) by achieving 983 megabits-per-second with a single IPv6 stream for more than an hour across a distance of 7,067 kilometers (more than 4,000 miles) from Geneva, Switzerland to Chicago, Ill. The record is comparative to transferring the equivalent of approximately one feature-length DVD-quality movie every 36 seconds, or more than 3,500 times faster than the typical home broadband connection.

The record setting team consisted of members from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and CERN. The new records were set through the efforts of the DataTAG project and CERN using a standard Linux TCP implementation demonstrating the broad possibilities of today’s high-performance networks. Major sponsorships came through the support of the European Union, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy through Caltech.

"This record demonstrates the ability of IPv6 to support gigabit per second class speeds over intercontinental network links," said Olivier Herve Martin, Head of External Networking at CERN and Manager of the European Union DataTAG project. "The record further proves that real science data can be transported around the globe in a timely manner and underscores that we are reaching network performance enabled international scientific collaboration."

Harvey Newman, Professor of Physics at Caltech and U.S. Compact Muon Solenoid Collaboration Board Chair added, "The efficient use of long distance networks at gigabit per second speeds is critical to the future of the high energy and nuclear physics community. This demonstration of gigabit per second transfers over intercontinental distances using IPv6 marks an important milestone in the development of our facilities and protocols needed to support the data analysis needs and the mission of emerging experimental programs in high energy physics."

"Matching efforts in the global academic community, the Internet2 community in the United States is actively deploying IPv6 on campus, regional and national backbone networks," said Guy Almes, Chief Engineer for Internet2. "This new record shows that IPv6, crucial to the Internet’s continued scalable growth and innovation, also supports the stringent high-performance networking requirements of research and education."

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.

Caltech and CERN also hold the current Internet2 Land Speed Record in the IPv4 class, in collaboration with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The team transferred one terabyte of data across 10,037 kilometers (more than 6,000 miles) in less than one hour, from Sunnyvale, Calif., to Geneva, Switzerland. This corresponds to a sustained TCP rate of 2.38 gigabits per second for more than one hour.

About CERN and DataTAG

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.

The DataTAG is a project co-funded by the European Union, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. It is led by CERN together with four other partners. The project brings together the following European leading research agencies: Italy’s Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), France’s Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), the UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), and Holland’s University of Amsterdam (UvA). The DataTAG project is very closely associated with the European Union DataGrid project, the largest grid project in Europe also led by CERN. For more information, visit http://www.datatag.org.

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. For more information about Caltech, visit: http://www.caltech.edu.

About Internet2(R)

Led by over 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and government, Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today’s Internet in its infancy. For more information about Internet2, visit: http://www.internet2.edu/

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Contacts:

Michelle Pollak, Internet2

mpollak@internet2.edu

(202) 331-5345

Olivier Herve Martin, CERN

Olivier.martin@cern.ch

Harvey B. Newman, High Energy Physics Department, Caltech newman@hep.caltech.edu

(626) 395-6656

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