Net 'Speed Record' - 8.4GB Over 3,500 Miles In 82 Secs
Web surfers tired of the "World Wide Wait" may drool over a "land speed record" logged by some high-profile technology outfits in a competition staged by the Internet2 consortium.
Making bandwidth-hungry applications such as today's streaming Internet video look like child's play, a team from Microsoft Corp., Qwest Communications Inc., the University of Washington, and the Information Sciences Institute managed to move 8.4 gigabytes of data 5,626 kilometers (nearly 3,500 miles) in 82 seconds.
The winning entry in Internet2's first data drag race was announced today during a conference of consortium members in Washington, D.C. The winning team will receive a $10,000 prize personally anted by computing pioneers Gordon Bell and Jim Gray (both now Microsoft researchers) earlier this month.
"We hope this competition gets people thinking about enabling really revolutionary Internet applications," said Gray, who is also a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. "The limits on today's Internet are no longer determined by raw bandwidth but rather how well the different network components work together. The Internet2 Land Speed Record competition should encourage people to tackle this set of challenges."
Internet2 said the winning entry, which moved its data from Redmond, Wash., to Arlington, Va., averaged a throughput of over 957 megabits per second - more than 15,000 times faster than a typical computer modem.
Entries were compared based on how much bandwidth they used and the distance the data traveled. Rules stated that entries had to use standard Internet (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol - TCP/IP) protocols. Entries had to move at least 100 megabytes over a minimum of 100 kilometers (60 miles). In addition, the data had to pass through at least two routers in each direction.
Data from the winning entry showed that Qwest's fiber optic network paved most of the way between a Compaq computer at Microsoft and a Dell computer sitting at the Information Sciences Institute in Arlington. Both machines were running Windows 2000. Along the way, the data passed through at least nine routers connected to Qwest's OC-48 fiber pathways.
"The Internet2 Land Speed Record highlights the need for dependable high end-to-end network throughput which is required by advanced applications but not commonly available to researchers today," said Guy Almes, chief engineer for Internet2.
The consortium said the Internet2 Land Speed Awards will be presented every six months, with the next scheduled for the Fall 2000 Internet2 Member Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
A Microsoft PowerPoint presentation providing the technical details of the winning team's performance can be found on the Web at: http://www.internet2.edu/html/i2lsr.html
Also available are submission guidelines for future competitions.
Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com