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LBLnet
Upgrades for 10 Gigabits-Per-Second Capability
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| The team that proved the viability of 10 gigabits-per-second
data transfer included Mike Bennet (LBLnet), Chip Smith (NERSC), Raju
Shah (Force10 Networks), John Shalf (NERSC) and John Christman (LBLnet). |
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Over the summer, members of the Lab's networking
staff collaborated with NERSC staff and a number of network hardware vendors
to achieve a milestone - saturating a 10 gigabit Ethernet connection with
data from a real scientific application - and recording a measurable 10
gigabits per second data transmission.
While the demonstration earned bragging rights for Force10 Networks, manufacturer
of the 10 Gig E switch, the July test also showed that scientific experiments
and visualizations are capable of swamping older networks. After extensively
testing the router in a demanding real-world environment, Berkeley Lab was
the first customer to buy the Force10 equipment. Read
more about the demo.
In order to put 10 Gigabit Ethernet in perspective, consider that the average
desktop machine connects at 100 megabits per second. In essence, the higher-speed
technology is 100 times faster. Here's an example of the advantage of faster
data transfer: the file size of a raw digital version of "The Matrix"
(AVI format) is approximately 236 gigabits. With 10 Gigabit Ethernet, transferring
the entire movie file takes 23.6 seconds. In contrast, the average desktop
machine transfer using Fast Ethernet takes 2360 seconds, or roughly 39 minutes.
The same transfer over a DSL line takes 66 hours.
During the last few years, LBLnet has been completing various upgrades to
keep pace with network growth. One key element of the current round of upgrades
is the LBLnet Backbone, through which all Lab inter-building and Internet-destined
traffic must flow. As a part of this upgrade, the 10 Gig E router has been
installed, connecting LBLnet to ESnet and the world beyond. This will allow
the Lab to upgrade its "border" gateway from 1gigabit per second
to 10 Gigabit Ethernet when necessary.
Although such a capability would have been seen as superfluous a couple
of years ago, it's clear that there are now applications ready to benefit
from this level of bandwidth in the very near future.
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