High-Speed Data Transfer System Garners Outreach Award

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) has rewarded researchers at the California Institute of Technology for better connecting physicists worldwide. Lead project scientist Harvey Newman, professor of physics at Caltech, Julian Bunn of the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research, and their international team of researchers will receive a trophy for Innovations in Networking at a ceremony in Oakland, California, on March 11.

Based on exciting recent developments, the Caltech award is for the project called UltraLight, Bunn says. UltraLight was developed in 2004 in large part to support the decades of research that will emerge from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The project provides advanced global systems and networks, and this summer will start transferring data as the LHC becomes operational.

UltraLight exhibited its capabilities in a showroom demonstration for CENIC during a supercomputing conference in November 2007, sustaining disk-to-disk data transfers of up to 88 gigabits per second (Gbps) between Caltech and Reno, Nevada, for more than a day. But data flows from the LHC experiments will be the first time that UltraLight will strut its stuff for scientists hungry for data.

The CENIC Innovations in Networking awards are split into four categories, and this year for the first time CENIC declared a tie in Experimental/Developmental Applications between UltraLight and another contender, CineGrid, which facilitates the exchange of digital media over a network. Bunn will accept the trophy and present the group’s project at the CENIC 2008: Lightpath to the Stars conference in Oakland on Tuesday, March 11.

> Read more at the Caltech Press Release.

New World Record Announced for Internet Performance – April 2004

Caltech and CERN send data at more than 6.25 Gbps across nearly 11,000 km Arlington, Va., April 20, 2004 – An international team has set a new Internet2R Land Speed Record by transferring data across nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average rate of 6.25 gigabits per second (Gbps), nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, from Geneva, Switzerland to Los Angeles, Calif. The Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) is an open and ongoing competition for the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end networks.

The mark of 68,431 terabit-meters per second, which used the same IPv4 protocols deployed throughout the global Internet, was set by a team consisting of members from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and CERN. The same team previously set a new mark of four Gbps over the same distance using IPv6, the next generation of Internet protocols.

“The team from Caltech and CERN have again set a new measure for Internet performance,” said Rich Carlson, Chair of the I2-LSR judging panel. “By pushing the envelope of end-to-end networking, their efforts demonstrate new possibilities for enabling research, teaching, and learning using advanced Internet technology.”

The new mark was announced today in conjunction with the Spring 2004 Internet2 Member Meeting. The most recent record was set with the support of Microsoft, S2io, Intel, Cisco Systems, HP, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the European Union, and the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California.

More information can be found at: http://ultralight.caltech.edu/lsr/

Details of the winning entries, complete rules, submission guidelines and additional details are available at: http://lsr.internet2.edu/