New Intercontinental
Internet Performance Records Set inInternet2 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.
http://www.surfnet.nl
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
