Fast Network Record

An international team of scientists and engineers for the 3rd consecutive year has smashed the network speed record, moving data along at an average rate of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) for several hours at a time. A rate of 100 Gbps is sufficient for transmitting 5 feature-length DVD movies on the Internet from one location to another in a single second.

Physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers from all over the world formed this "High-Energy Physics" (HEP) team and joined forces to set a new world record for data transfer, capturing first prize at the Supercomputing 2005 (SC05) Bandwidth Challenge (BWC). The HEP team is led by the California Institute ofTechnology, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Fermilab, CERN, and the University of Michigan and partners at the University of Florida,Vanderbilt, and the Brookhaven National Lab, as well as international participants from the UK (University of Manchester and UKLight), Brazil (Rio de Janeiro State University, UERJ, and the State Universities of São Paulo,USP and UNESP), Korea (Kyungpook National University, KISTI) and Japan (theKEK Laboratory in Tsukuba).

The HEP team's demonstration of "Distributed TeraByte Particle Physics DataSample Analysis" achieved a peak throughput of 151 Gbps and an official mark of 131.6 Gbps measured by the BWC judges on 17 of the 22 optical fiber links used by the team, beating their previous mark for peak throughput of 101 Gbps by 50%. In addition to the impressive transfer rate for DVD movies, the new record data transfer speed is also equivalent to serving 10,000 MPEG2HDTV movies simultaneously in real time, or transmitting all of the printed content of the Library of Congress in 10 minutes. The team sustained average data rates above the 100 Gbps level for several hours for the first time, and transferred a total of 475 terabytes of physics data among the team's sites throughout the U.S. and overseas within 24 hours.

By demonstrating that many 10 Gbps wavelengths can be used efficiently over continental and transoceanic distances (often in both directions simultaneously), the HEP team showed that this vision of a worldwide dynamic Grid supporting many terabyte and larger data transactions is practical.

Further information about the demonstration may be found at: http://ultralight.caltech.edu/web-site/sc05
http://wwwiepm.slac.stanford.edu/monitoring/bulk/sc2005/hiperf.html
http://supercomputing.fnal.gov/
http://monalisa.caltech.edu