News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

May 21, 2002

GLOBAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORKING PARTNERSHIP INAUGURATED AT 
EUROPEAN COMMISSION SUMMIT

First Trans-Atlantic Telegram Transmitted 10 Billion Times Faster

Brussels, BELGIUM--Key leaders in advanced networking from all over the 
world today inaugurated the Global Terabit Research Network 
(www.gtrn.net) during the Global Research Networking Summit and GÉANT 
Commissioning Event hosted by the European Commission and GÉANT/DANTE at 
the International Press Centre.

The Global Terabit Research Network (GTRN) is an international 
partnership to establish a true world-wide next generation Internet to 
interconnect national and multinational high speed research and 
education networks. The initial partnership between Europe through the 
NREN Consortium and North America through Internet2 in the US and 
CANARIE in Canada was formalized earlier this spring. At today's 
inauguration the participation of the Asia Pacific was formally 
announced. The GTRN will be extended to connect the new GTRN-AP network 
which is a high-speed regional network that presently links SINET and 
IMnet in Japan and KREONET in Korea. CERNET of China is expected to 
connect to it soon, followed by other countries in the Asia Pacific.

Earlier this week, a GTRN demonstration was completed during which the 
text of the first message sent over the Atlantic Ocean--a telegram sent 
from Queen Victoria to US President Buchanan--was transmitted repeatedly 
over the GTRN for 17 hours and 40 minutes--the exact time it took to 
transmit the Queen's message containing 99 words consisting of 509 
letters in August 1858. The Queen's message transmitted over the GTRN 
approximately 10 billion times in the same amount of time it took to 
transmit the original message.

During the time it took to send the Queen's congratulations and best 
wishes 144 years ago, the amount of data transferred over the GTRN was 
the equivalent of 960 kilometers of shelved books--roughly twice the 
books in the US Library of Congress. This transfer took place between 
standard PCs in Seattle Washington US and Brussels Belgium. BELNET, the 
Belgian national research network for education, research and public 
services under the leadership of Pierre Bruyére, provided the local link 
into the Residence Palace for the demonstration event.

"Recent years have seen the creation of a number of very successful 
national and multi-national advanced high speed research networks 
including the accomplishments of the pan-European GÉANT network," said 
Mario Campolargo, Deputy Head of Unit, DGINFSO of the European 
Commission. "These networks provide the bandwidth needed for digital 
science nationally and regionally, but further development of e-science 
on an international scale has been hampered by a lack of a global 
backbone comparable in speed and reliability to these national and 
regional networks," said Campolargo.

Fernando Liello, Chairman of the European NREN Consortium said, "The 
GTRN, in conjunction with advanced networks like GÉANT, provides the 
connectivity and advanced Internet services needed by researchers and 
scientists conducting major multinational scientific collaborations in 
areas such as high energy physics, radio and optical astronomy, weather 
forecasting and climatology, biological sciences and earth sciences."

"GTRN provides a coherent global framework for deploying services such 
as multicast and IPv6, which are key to providing advanced networking 
needed to support tomorrow's research and education on global scale," 
said Douglas Van Houweling, President and CEO of Internet2, the US 
advanced Internet development consortium.

Andrew Bjerring, President and CEO of CANARIE Inc., Canada's advanced 
Internet development organization added, "Pervasive global access to 
applications such as reliable high quality video, telephony, remote 
instrument control and numerous other applications require these 
advanced services be an integral part of a global research network."

"What has been lacking is a persistent, production-quality global 
research and education network--one that is capable eventually of data 
rates of terabits per second", said Michael McRobbie, Vice President for 
Information Technology and CIO at Indiana University and Chair of 
Internet2's GTRN Committee. "The GTRN will provide this true global 
research network connectivity, offering the very high bandwidth 
connections that allow national and regional networks to properly 
interconnect."

"Connecting to the GTRN will expand the scale and scope of scientific 
projects and international collaborations presently taking place on the 
Asia Pacific Advanced Network," said Professor Shigeki Goto, Professor 
of Computer Science at Wasada University.

The GTRN will support global research and education requiring access to 
advanced high performance Internet services. It will be run in a highly 
transparent manner so that end-to-end performance characteristics will 
be easily accessible to all parties responsible for ensuring the 
appropriate quality of service.

The GTRN will consist of a global backbone connecting national and 
multi-national networks in North America, and Europe and Asia. Later it 
is expected to be expanded to Latin America, Russia, the Middle East and 
Africa. Access to the GTRN will be provided at a number of points of 
presence (GTRN Network Access Points--GNAPs).

The GTRN backbone between Europe and North America is composed of two 
OC-48 2.4 gigabit per second (Gbit) circuits acquired by DANTE 
connecting GÉANT to the Internet2 Abilene network, the CANARIE CA*net3 
network, STAR TAP/Starlight in Chicago, and the Pacific Wave GigaPoP in 
Seattle. These connect to the GÉANT backbone in Europe at GNAPs in 
London and Frankfurt and to Abilene and CA*net3 in North America at the 
New York GNAP. Additional high speed connections from North America to 
GÉANT to complement those acquired by DANTE are being actively pursued, 
as are connections to other regions.

Internet2 will provide additional capacity on the Abilene network 
connecting the New York GNAP to Starlight in Chicago and to the Pacific 
Wave GigaPoP in Seattle to allow for the forthcoming connection of the 
Asia Pacific to the GTRN. From these, the GTRN backbone is connected to 
the GTRN-AP via the two OC-12s that comprise the TransPAC connection 
which is jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation and the 
Japan Science and Technology Corporation.

The European NREN Consortium, Internet2 and CANARIE have agreed to 
manage the facilities in a coordinated and cooperative way. The Global 
Network Operations Center (GNOC) at Indiana University and the DANTE NOC 
will provide NOC services to the GTRN as will eventually a NOC in the 
Asia Pacific.

Related Links:

DANTE/GÉANT (http://www.dante.net/)
Internet2 (http://www.internet2.edu)
CANARIE/CAnet3 (http://www.canarie.ca/)
NSF (http://www.nsf.gov/)
STAR TAP/StarLight (http://www.startap.net/starlight/)
Pacific Wave (http://pacificwave.net/)
Global Research Network Operations Center (http://globalnoc.iu.edu/)
APAN (http://www.apan.net/)
TransPAC (http:///www.transpac.org)

Contacts:

Dale Roberson (DANTE, 
)
Greg Wood (Internet2, 
,
 202-331-5360)
Susan Baldwin (CANARIE Inc., Susan. 
,
 612-943-5399)
Karen Adams (Indiana University, 
,
 812-856-5596)
Shigeki Goto (Waseda University, 
)

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