PUBLICATIONS Archived Press Releases

First Transatlantic Native 10GE Demo’ed

November 4, 2003 First Transatlantic Native 10 Gigabit Ethernet Connection Demonstrated at ITU Telecom World 2003 OTTAWA, CANADA - CANARIE and SURFnet in partnership with Carleton University and CERN have succeeded in creating the first transatlantic connection using native 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology. Spanning more than 10.000 km and two continents, recent tests have validated the viability of 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology running over long-haul networking infrastructure. Demonstrated during the recent ITU Telecom World 2003 exhibition, the first transatlantic native 10 Gigabit Ethernet marks the emergence of Ethernet into the traditional world of telecommunications. At 10 Gigabits per second, the point to point lightpath is 100 to 1000 times faster than everyday networks used to inter-connect computers in businesses, schools, and homes. This opens the possibility of directly connecting scientists and researchers with remote instruments, data, and computational resources an ocean away in unprecedented ways. The network consists of a SURFnet optical circuit between CERN and the StarLight facility in Chicago via Amsterdam and another optical circuit between StarLight and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada provided by CANARIE and ORANO. The assembly of these circuits forms an end-to-end lightpath, a point-to-point optical link, between CERN and Carleton University. 10 Gigabit Ethernet devices were directly attached at the two end points of the lightpath to create the first inter-continental native 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection, effectively extending the span of an Ethernet network across countries and continents. The lightpath is a realization of an emerging networking paradigm of several research networks (such as CA*net 4 and SURFnet5) for supporting data and computationally intensive research. This “optical bypass” provides a fast long wide pipe for ultra speed data transport, a fundamental requirement for large scale scientific experiments and global scale Grids. The end-to-end lightpath concept complements the classic Internet best effort approach by providing large amounts of dedicated bandwidth for demanding users. Gerald Oakham, Professor of Physics at Carleton University commented: “This demonstration of an operating 10 GbE lightpath between CERN and Carleton University is an important step in establishing the technology for global Grid computing. Future experiments in particle physics such as ATLAS, with its demand for global computing and high data transfer rates will be a direct beneficiary of these efforts.” “The data rates for the ATLAS experiment will be unprecedented in the natural sciences with the collaboration spread around the globe,” noted Dr. Patricia Kalyniak, Chair, Department of Physics, at Carleton University. “Transfer of the data, about 1 Petabyte annually, equivalent to nearly 1.5 million data CDs, to all participants would not be viable without pushing the frontier of networking technology.” The live demonstrations during the ITU World Telecom 2003 exhibition showcased IXIA traffic generators connected to Force10 Networks E600 switch / routers utilizing all available bandwidth over the connection, e.g. 9.24 Gbps, which is roughly equivalent to transmitting 1.5 data CDs every second. The connection was also used for studying the performance of TCP. A transfer rate of 5.66 Gbps using a bandwidth characterization tool, iperf was achieved between two high performance Itanium-2 servers equipped with Intel PRO/10GbE network adapters. Preliminary interpretation of the results indicates that both software and hardware limitations were responsible for the reduced transfer rate during the PC-to-PC tests. Finally, large amounts of experimental data from recently completed tests of the Forward Calorimeter components of the ATLAS detector being built at CERN for the upcoming Large Hadron Collider was transported back to Carleton University for analysis. Erik Radius, Manager Network Services of SURFnet, welcomes the results. “This pioneering work shows that demanding applications can directly benefit from recent advances in Ethernet technology and the inherent transparency of lambda networking. The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) with its optical exchange points like NetherLight in Amsterdam and StarLight in Chicago proved to be indispensable for these global lightpath experiments.” Bob Dobinson of CERN commented. “As well as successfully validating the 10 GE standard on a Trans Atlantic platform, these tests are significant for the way that a large number of organizations worked together and contributed to what is a very successful outcome. It’s nice to see multiple vendor equipment interoperate. It has been a real pleasure to work with all our collaborators.” Added Wade Hong of Carleton University. “This and future experiments exploring next generation networking paradigms for the global Research and Education communities is made possible through the vision and leadership of advanced networks such as CA*net 4, SURFnet5 and ORION; and optical Internet exchange facilities such as StarLight and NetherLight.” This experimental use of an end to end lightpath was conducted as part of the Carleton University led CA*net 4 International Grid Testbed, supported under CANARIE’s Directed Research Program. Participating and collaborative institutions include the University of Alberta, University of Victoria, TRIUMF, University of Toronto and CERN. The demonstrations were made possible through the support of the following manufacturers, who have generously contributed their equipment and knowledge: Force10 Networks, IXIA, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Intel and Ciara Technologies. We acknowledge the support of: European Union project ESTA (IST-2001-33182), CERN OpenLAB, NL GigaPort project, and SARA. Network expertise and third party validation was provided by Cortex Networks in Ottawa for the test configuration and execution. Carleton University-Canada’s Capital University Carleton University is a dynamic research and learning institution located in Ottawa, Canada. The research being done by the particle physics group and supporting technical staff at the Department of Physics have contributed to Carleton’s phenomenal research story. One of their primary projects is as members of the ATLAS collaboration, now constructing and testing the ATLAS detector for implementation at CERN’s LHC. ATLAS test beam data collected at CERN has served as the data transfer set for end to end lightpath tests, in anticipation of the huge data volume to come out of the LHC’s physics program. See: www.carleton.ca For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 4 Optical Internet program web site at www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html