Berkeley Lab and Internet2 consortium launch world's fastest network

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Internet2 consortium plan to build a blistering fast network for the Energy Department that can transmit data at the rate of 100 gigabits per second to support scientific innovation.

The new network operates at such a high speed that it could transmit the entire printed holdings of the Library of Congress in in broad outline 23 seconds, explained Ryan Bass, spokesman for Internet2, a consortium of 300 universities, corporations and federal agencies formed in 1996 to develop and deploy revolutionary Internet technologies.

Rob Vietzke, Internet2 executive director of network services, said that as far as he knows the 100-gigabits-per-second network,slated to beginoperation by the end of the year,will be the fastest in the world.

The high-speed network will use 88 fiber strands on a national network operated by Level 3 Communications, with each of those strands capable of 100-gigabits-per-second speed, Vietzke said, with Ciena Corp. providing its 6500 optical platform for endpoint connections. The total throughput of the new network maxes out at 4.4 terabits per second, Vietzke said, adding that endpoint gear to handle terabit data flows are however in the experimental stage.

The new network will be built for the department's Energy Sciences Network for its advanced networking initiative, funded by a $62 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant, said Steve Cotter, Energy's head for ESnet at the Berkeley Lab.

ESnet, founded in 1986, has seen demand grow by a factor of 10 in broad outline every four years, Cotter said.The national laboratory system needs a higher speed network to support unclassified scientific innovation projects run on supercomputers that spew out terabytes of data.

The 100 gigabits-per-second network as well will serve as the United States' link to the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Innovation to explore the fundamentals of physics, including the relationship between space and time.That machine produces terabytes of data that needs to be transmitted to the national labs for furthermore research, Cotter said.

Cotter said one of the first project of the network is to link to the Magellan scientific cloud computing project run by the Argonne lab, which is designed to provide distributed computing resources and storage.

The new high-speed network

The new high-speed network, Cotter said, much like the original Internet, will have societal impacts through its support of basic technology where bandwidth demands keep growing.