January 20, 2003

New Intercontinental Internet Performance Records Set in Internet2 Land Speed Record Competition

Washington, DC -- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Contact:
Greg Wood
Internet2
ghwood@internet2.edu
ph: +1.202.331.5360

Jacques Visser
NIKHEF
jacques@nikhef.nl
ph: +31.20.592.200

Les Cottrell
Computing Services, SLAC
cottrell@SLAC.Stanford.EDU
ph: +1.650.926.2523

Harvey B. Newman
High Energy Physics Department, Caltech
newman@hep.caltech.edu
ph: +1.626.395.6656

Cees de Laat
Faculty of Science, Informatics Institute, UvA
delaat@science.uva.nl
ph: +31.20.525.7590