INDUSTRY

WASHINGTON, DC -- An international team set a new record for Internet performance by transferring the equivalent of an entire compact disc's contents across more than 7608 miles (12,272 km) of network in 13 seconds. The rate of 401 megabits per second achieved in transferring 625 megabytes of data from Fairbanks, Alaska to Amsterdam in the Netherlands is over 8000 times greater than the fastest dial-up modem. The record-setting team consisted of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks; the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam and SURFnet, the national computer network for higher education and research in the Netherlands. In setting the new Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) they used the networking capabilities of the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, an access point to leading-edge networks; the Internet2 Abilene backbone network; StarLight, the advanced optical infrastructure and proving ground in Chicago, Illinois; and SURFnet. The high-speed SURFnet connections used to set this record were developed as part of the GigaPort project, the Dutch Next Generation Internet initiative. The interconnection between SURFnet’s PoPs in Amsterdam and Chicago uses Global Crossing’s virtual private network service. On both ends standard PC-like hardware running Debian GNU/LINUX was used. "Today's high performance internet networks in at least the US and the Netherlands, as well as the interconnection between the two, have no bottlenecks any more for high speed data applications," said Erik-Jan Bos, Manager Network Services at SURFnet. "What we found is that the bottleneck has shifted towards the very end of the connections: the computers in use with limited bandwidths on the bus." "This shows that geography is no barrier to advanced network applications," said Kerry Digou, systems programmer who headed the University of Alaska team. "Using standard equipment and infrastructure developed in the Internet2 community, we've pushed the boundaries to the edges." Cees de Laat, researcher at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam and member of the Grid Forum Steering Group, adds: "High speed backbones are essential for today's Grid Applications where scientists on a global scale want to handle terabyte size datasets in international collaborations. This Land Speed Record shows what two distant locations can do together when they set their mind to it." "The new Internet2 Land Speed Record demonstrates that high performance networking is not constrained by national boundaries," said Rich Carlson, network research scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and chair of the I2-LSR judging panel. "The international team involved in this effort has set a new standard for wide area, high performance networking." Entries were judged on a combination of how much bandwidth they used and how much distance they 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: www.internet2.edu/html/i2lsr.shtml.