INDUSTRY

WASHINGTON -- 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.