Physicists Set New Record for Network Data Transfer at CACR/Caltech/CERN joint exhibit at SC06

Click here for a full-sized version of the thumbnail above. Image shows a MonALISA plot of the aggregated network traffic to the Caltech booth, during and after the Bandwidth Challenge. (The initial blue region at the left of the graph is the BWC entry.)

An international team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers led by the California Institute of Technology, CERN, and the University of Michigan with partners at the University of Florida and Vanderbilt, as well as participants from Brazil and Korea, joined forces to set new records for sustained data transfer between storage systems during the SC06 Bandwidth Challenge.

The high-energy physics team’s demonstration of “High Speed Data Gathering, Distribution and Analysis for Physics Discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider” achieved a peak throughput of 17.77 gigabits per second (Gbps) between clusters of servers at the show floor and at Caltech. Following the rules set for the SC06 Bandwidth Challenge, the team used a single 10-Gbps link provided by National Lambda Rail that carried data in both directions. Sustained throughput throughout the night prior to the bandwidth challenge exceeded 16 Gbps (or two gigabytes per second) using just 10 pairs of small servers sending data at 9 Gbps to Caltech from Tampa, and eight pairs of servers sending 7 Gbps of data in the reverse direction. (Read more in the Caltech Press Release)