On Internet2 the future runs at 100Gbps

San Diego (USA) – Speeds today unattainable even by the fastest Ethernet local networks, on the next generation American Internet they are already a reality. The Internet2 consortium has in fact completed the upgrade of its super-fast network to the capacity of 100 gigabits per second, a bandwidth obtained by aggregating ten optical links of 10 Gbps each.

“Today’s milestone marks the completion of an ambitious effort to exponentially increase the capacity and flexibility of network resources, resources made available to the rapidly changing needs of the Internet community2,” said Doug Van Houweling, president and CEO of the consortium that develops and manages Internet2. “More importantly, we believe that the Internet2 network and its new capabilities will play an essential part in enabling our consortium members to provide the robust cyber infrastructure our community needs to support innovation in research and research. instruction”.

The other novelty announced by the American consortium is the implementation of the technology Dynamic Circuit Network (DCN), which allows researchers to activate a 10 Gbps point-to-point connection with other colleagues using the Internet2. These dedicated on-demand connections allow you to take advantage of the full bandwidth of an optical link, but are only granted for short-term transfers.

A demonstration of DCN it was given on Tuesday by Carl Lundstedt, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who set up a point-to-point connection with the research institute in Fermilab, Illinois. Thanks to 10 Gbps of bandwidth, equivalent to 1,280 MBps, the American researcher was able to transfer a third of a terabyte of data (approximately 333 GB) over a five-minute period . With such a connection, transferring a typical dual-layer DVD movie would take just over 6 seconds.

The actual launch of the DCN functionality will take place next January along with other technologies aimed at optimizing the Internet’s IPv6 network2.

The Internet2 consortium has already said that it is working on network technologies capable of aggregating, thanks to the use of tens or even hundreds of different wavelengths, up to 100 Gbps over a single optical link .