November 2003
ORION assists in first Transatlantic Native 10 GbE connection
Researchers in Europe and North America have succeeded in creating the first transatlantic connection using native 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology.
In a demonstration involving Carleton University in Ottawa and CERN in Switzerland, through connections provided by ORION and CANARIE, 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 ORION.
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.
"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,” said Gerald Oakham, Professor of Physics at Carleton University. “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 utilized all available bandwidth over the connection, e.g. 9.24 Gbps, which is roughly equivalent to transmitting 1.5 data CDs every second.
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.
"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," said Wade Hong of Carleton University
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.
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