News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

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

Washington, DC-May 7, 2002—An international team set a new record for
Internet performance by transferring the equivalent of an entire compact
disc's contents across more than 7608 miles (12,272 km) of network in 13
seconds. The rate of 401 megabits per second achieved in transferring
625 megabytes of data from Fairbanks, Alaska to Amsterdam in the
Netherlands is over 8000 times greater than the fastest dial-up modem.

The record-setting team consisted of the University of Alaska at
Fairbanks; the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam and
SURFnet, the national computer network for higher education and research
in the Netherlands.  In setting the new Internet2 Land Speed Record
(I2-LSR) they used the networking capabilities of the Pacific Northwest
Gigapop, an access point to leading-edge networks; the Internet2 Abilene
backbone network; StarLight, the advanced optical infrastructure and
proving ground in Chicago, Illinois; and SURFnet.

The high-speed SURFnet connections used to set this record were
developed as part of the GigaPort project, the Dutch Next Generation
Internet initiative. The interconnection between SURFnet’s PoPs in
Amsterdam and Chicago uses Global Crossing’s virtual private network
service. On both ends standard PC-like hardware running Debian GNU/LINUX
was used.

"Today's high performance internet networks in at least the US and the
Netherlands, as well as the interconnection between the two, have no
bottlenecks any more for high speed data applications," said Erik-Jan
Bos, Manager Network Services at SURFnet. "What we found is that the
bottleneck has shifted towards the very end of the connections: the
computers in use with limited bandwidths on the bus."

"This shows that geography is no barrier to advanced network
applications," said Kerry Digou, systems programmer who headed the
University of Alaska team. "Using standard equipment and infrastructure
developed in the Internet2 community, we've pushed the boundaries to the
edges."

Cees de Laat, researcher at the Faculty of Science of the University of
Amsterdam and member of the Grid Forum Steering Group, adds: "High speed
backbones are essential for today's Grid Applications where scientists
on a global scale want to handle terabyte size datasets in international
collaborations. This Land Speed Record shows what two distant locations
can do together when they set their mind to it."

"The new Internet2 Land Speed Record demonstrates that high performance
networking is not constrained by national boundaries," said Rich
Carlson, network research scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and
chair of the I2-LSR judging panel. "The international team involved in
this effort has set a new standard for wide area, high performance
networking."

Entries were judged on a combination of how much bandwidth they used and
how much distance they 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://www.internet2.edu/html/i2lsr.shtml

About Internet2(R)
Led by over 190 U.S. universities, working with industry and government,
Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network applications and
technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the
creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships
among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's
Internet in its infancy. For more information about Internet2, see:
http://www.internet2.edu/

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. For more information, see:
http://www.surfnet.nl/en/ and http://www.gigaport.nl/

The Faculty of Science of University of 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 groundbreaking
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. For more
information, see:
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/air/

About the University of Alaska
The University of Alaska is Alaska's only public system of higher
education. The system, which covers an area one-fifth the size of the
contiguous United States, is comprised of three multi-mission
universities located in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau with extended
satellite colleges and sites throughout Alaska that provide educational
services to urban and rural populations of diverse cultural backgrounds.
The university is a land-, sea-, and space-grant institution with strong
state and federally funded research programs. For more information, see:
http://www.alaska.edu

Contacts:
Greg Wood                       
Internet2

202-331-5360

Sandra Passchier
SURFnet

+31 30-2305305

Robert L. Miller
University of Alaska

907-474-6311





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