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A GEANT Leap Forward In Networking For Research
An anonymous reader contributes: "A research backbone network interconnecting more than 30 countries, through which hundreds of universities can exchange traffic, with a backbone running at 10 Gbps, born on the 1st of December. Yes, it exists, and this research network is not even in the U.S.!
GEANT is a european initiative which has just come online, so if you're a student in Europe, you may have noticed a significant change in your downloads speeds since last week. You can even check its weathermap! Well, obviously backbone links are still unused ... but that shouldn't last long, once people notice the sheer amount of bandwidth."
Dammn.. My ADSL is slow!
Have no backbone =(
Sorry if this is a dumb question. I guess I was just wondering if it would ever turn out that all these networks would join up someday, or if we'll end up needing multiple computers to connect to all the different internets (should we want to), or if we'll have high-speed backbones connecting the backbones...
Sorry, I'm a programmer. I don't know any more network stuff than is necessary to download pr0n on my breaks.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
That's cool and all, but the backbone's not the problem. The last mile's the problem.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
try opera.. the FASTEST browser on earth... or use telnet port 80 if you wanna be fatse rthan Opera..
a single percent of it's total capacity right now.
What does that mean? It's not even using up, in almost all cases, any more than a 1Gbps line would be using. Take a look at all that blue on the map. It seems to signify that this was a waste of time and money.
Basically, I'm all for this great stuff, but until they find a use for it, it's just money wasted when it could be going to places and projects in technology that could actually benefit.
Try and slashdot that !
stop wasting bandwidth, will you?
Thin-skinned shit.
Those itty bitty US1 and US2 links are warming up! Who says GEANT isn't needed ;-)
But will it survive a /.? :-)
chongo (was here)
It connects 30 countries... and is not in the USA?
Gee-ahnt? Jeeant? How do you pronoune this silly, silly acronym?
Everything is mainstream now.
"Yes, it exists, and this research network is not even in the U.S.!"
As if that's something hard to believe... considering the fast networks already developed and in development in Canada and Japan you'd think we could give other countries the credit they deserve. It's not like the US is the only country that knows how to string an Ethernet cable.
What's up people? This was supposed to be a lighthearted joke. Now everyone's twatting and shitting all over the place!
I'll leave the mop and bucket right here.
Ugh, I'm tired.
FYI: there are people in the world that think in different ways than you, and it does not mean that they are _worse_.
"Britney Spears on video giving her first blowjob !!!"
Boring.
"Buffy The Vampire Slayer in gangbang action !!!"
Boring
"Shania Twain takes it up the ass !!!"
Might be interested.
"Hundreds of your favorite celebs baring all in pics and vids !!!"
Well - one of my favorite celebs is Sir Ian McKellen; not sure I'd want this option.
"More action than you can poke your dick at !!!"
Nope - don't want that either, have enough action right here at home.
Oh yeah, something like 'giant' in French. But how would I know, we're all just ignorant /.ers and the world still revolves around America.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
yeah what ever happened to internet2, will this end up the sameway :(
Dude - lighten up. It's a joke.
God forbid someone should make a joke about the French language.
I'm tired.
Great now all my downloads of adul^H^H^H^H research content from the Netherlands will get to me faster.
I hate e-commerce t-shirt
Think Joke.
Sorry, I guess the Funny Bone is turned off.
Or you can't figure jokes out without smileys.
I'm not trying to be a poseur, but really it doesn't. Let me put it into perspective another way: Right now with my measly cable modem I can download from many sites at 2Mbps+ (I get a sustained 220KB/s from Microsoft). That means that a mere 77 of me can saturate a T3, and 5,000 of me can saturate a 10Gbps. Now everyone doesn't download at the same time, but when you're talking about Europe with 100s of millions of people... BTW: I realize that this is a research network not for public consumption, but my point is moreso that it's apparently such a big deal that these 10Gbps connections exist. This naturally makes me wonder what sort of backbones exist on the North America network, because I never have a problem downloading at 220KB/second, so I presume it must be pretty extraordinary.
Why? Why??
Great!
Post your e-mail address here and I'll send you more information straight away. You might also want to do that to keep up to date what's happening with my site. You might be missing a huge opportunity right now because you haven't signed up for my service!
No, it's a giant step in attempts to thwart slashdotting.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Hmm, it'd be pretty hard to slashdot geant.
Speaking from a UK perspective, our academical network (JANET) has already rolled out something similar to this. OK, it's a fraction of 10gbps - at 622mbps. Obviously every university doesn't get that amount of bandwidth; it's usually around 155mbps going into each major city I think. However, I believe geant will pave the way for some serious warezing!
I'd rather have a bowl of coco-pops.
Plus, the Internet2 backbone is moving to OC192 in the near term. Saturate that...
Well, I live in Luxembourg (Go Luxembourg! Woohoo!), and I seriously wonder to what they're running that line. Luxembourg (much to my chagrin) doesn't have an actual university. Makes me wonder. That, and the fact that that one line represents something like half the bandwidth running into the country...(actually, I think it's like a quarter. Either way, I'll never see any of it.:)
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
"Wow, well done guys. Our new multi-gagabyte network is now fully operational"
"Cheers...."
"Uh... Boss, hold on...."
"What?"
"Someone just posted us to slashdot!"
*Poof* goes the bandwidth
Seriously though, if they get slashdotted their really isnt any hope for the rest of us.
Oh, it's there. But the topology map would have looked much hairier with all the nordic countries drawn there.
Yes, it exists, and this research network is not even in the U.S!
Gosh! Outside the US! In Europe!
The Europeans really seem to be advancing don't they? A friend of mine visited Europe and told me that they've got TV, computers, mobile telephones, everything! How long before they catch up with the US?
However, they are still really lagging in cultural things. They don't have that many great places to hang out as in the US like Starbucks or MacDonalds (just little coffee shops and resturants which are all different!) and they don't have so many TV channels (and a lot of the ones they do have are in funny languages!). And they aren't as advanced politically as the US - they don't have the personal freedoms that we have, like the feedom to carry guns and, er, the other freedoms that we have.
(Yes, this is sarcasm).
the internet is still U.S.-centric. Perhaps what you yanks don't realise is is that most well developed countries actually have decent internal networks, but since the lion's share of Internet content is hosted in America, this is irrelevant, since it is the pipe to the U.S. that matters.
The diagram shows this - the two U.S. pipes are at around 30-50% utilisation (and are the smallest of the network), while the giant internal linkups are around 1-2%. What this says to me is that research typically doesn't use the bandwidth that they've provided for with this project. Consumer use of the internet will still get most content from America.
But I guess there is always merit in planning for the future, and we can always benefit from making the internet less 'any-one-particular-country'-centric (despite it's origins in ARPA etc).
fuck you
There was interesting article about this a few weeks ago in the gaurdian newspaper.
Although it's pretty thin on technical details, it does provide some insight into some of the questions people are posting, such as why they need all this bandwidth, why the US arent part of the project etc.
So what's so special about 10Mbps? Am I missing the point?
Mr. Ska
Are accents written on capital letters? I got the impression they usually weren't.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I prob should have mentioned that OC192 is essentially 10Gbps in my earlier post. This means that Internet2 will be equiv (in terms of backbone speed) to GEANT in the near term. (You can read the PR about the Internet2 upgrade if you are interested.
of course the majority of the network doesn't exist in the US.. since it's a european network.. it's like saying that China doesn't exist in the US.. it doesn't, except for the embassies and the spies..
but what were those two US connections I saw on the GEAN network (sorry I don't have that funny looking G on it.. I'm too lazy to hit my character map to copy and paste it) US1 and US2? looks like someone's leeching off of my adsl.. funny, there's a 10GB/s backbone growing out of my dsl connection!
This is a word, not an acronym- it's probably being spelled in caps for same reason Unix is UNIX (cos the guys in charge like the way it looks that way) I'm not sure if accents are used on caps, but the existence within the char set suggest they are to me
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
- They're not even using 1% of capacity
- They should invest more in the last mile
I think that their idea might be to restructure the backbone services so that they are able to handle the imminent speed and reliability increases in the last mile.In future news we'll be seeing things like:
x Telecomms corporation runs fibre in the last mile giving millions of European households the faster internet access that was made possible with the introduction of Géant's new backbone network.
I may be wrong, but that's just my $0.02
Follow me
I remeber when I was at Texas A&M I could get really good ping times on servers at Harvard, University of Texas (gasp), and other schools on the I2 for playing quake. Its funny what a traceroute will turn up. Thank you Internet2 :)
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
There was a recent (last decade or so) ruling on this by the official guardians of the French language (not sure which group). It is now optional, whereas prior to the ruling accents were required.
As a french-speaking Belgian, I can tell you that I was taught in school that you don't put accents on caps. Maybe it's not a hard rule and you can go either way. I do however remember playing with my dad's typewriter when I was a kid and there was no way to put an accent on a capital letter.
Geesh, apparently someone needs to receive to be sent to re-education camp.
Look at the weathermap carefully and you will notice that some links change color halfway. The only explanation that I can come up with is packetloss:)
0x or or snor perron?!
To quote a famouse obvious scientist. Sure it may be 1000X faster than a regular network but that just means we'll soon have machines putting out 1000x more data or have a 1000x more machines on a network, etc. No matter how much bandwidth there is it will always be maxed out.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
With all the comments about using it for faster downloads, etc, etc, people seem to be missing the fact that it'll only really speed your downloads up if you're accessing another site on GEANT. Personally when I was a student, connecting to other academic sites was never particularly slow - but JANET (the UK academic net) doesn't have particularly good peering to transatlantic links (clearly due to the cost).
What GEANT will help make more possible is inter-site co-operation, and apps like high bandwidth video streams. In response to the guy who said it was a waste of money - give it time?
Seriously though, this has ( as the US based Education networks and the like do ) the capability to further increase benefits for all of the students and researchers at the connected institutions. One of the things that Internet2 doesn't have in quite as much abundance is overwhelming raw bandwidth availability. Can't find the time to visit another school to attend a lecture? A course you want to take isn't offered at your school, but is at another one?
Realtime video and remote tele-presence applications will easily consume this bandwidth and more ( assuming they aren't drowned out by DIVX and MP3s flying around. ).
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Segmentation Fault ( core dumped )
From what I understand, the need for so much bandwidth is due to the new particle accelerator at CERN, which'll be coming on line in a few years time. When that gets run, it'll generate data in the region of gigabits/s; that's why there's all these massive data pipes pointing at Switzerland - it's to shunt off all the data around Europe to get processed!
Well, at least this coward's historical facts are correct...
he never said that america was the best. Typical illerate response. he was stating experiences in america, and comparing americas network. he said it was extrodinary, never bashing europes or anything of the sort. Arogant america, wrong, arogant troll who needs to stop bashing america (atleast when its unfounded, fair game when it is founded)
Where is the bandwidth being used right now? Not on the intraeuropean 10 Gbps links, noooooo! It's being used on the weakest links, the ones connected to US1 and US2. Looks like the porn is much better on this side of the Atlantic. At least, that's what the eurostudents think...
This is great! Too bad, though, it will not make much difference to me out in the sticks with my 56k dialup.
This addresses fundamental routing issues, so my apologies to most of you, however I think some of this crowd needs some clarification (albeit a simplified version):
:)
To all those who are posting such things as "now all I need is fiber to my home" or "I wonder if the Slashdot effect can saturate it" or "how come my ping times to it are so slow?":
You should know that hosts on these networks are generally a mix of globally- and non-globally-accessable. Meaning, many POPs that are "hooked up" to some high-speed initiative like vBNS or Abilene also have "commodity links." Commodity links are normal T3s, etc that are hooked up to a commercial ISP. This makes the site multi-homed, and helps minimize the amount of non-research-related traffic being sent over the high-speed links, because if you want to look at www.cnn.com from, say, a vBNS-connected box, it'll go over the commodity link instead of vBNS.
So the answer is, yes: the Slashdot effect can probably affect GEANT's web site because the Slashdot effect would flood their commodity link. On the other hand, if you were at a GEANT node... good luck trying, and enjoy the pings
-Brian
brian@internet2.edu
Intercarve Networks, LLC
The US isn't involved at all? Are you *sure*? Is that legal?
;)
Well, if nothing else, I'm sure ECHELON is involved in some small way.
You know you are a geek when you look at that network bandwidth image with the blue lines and drool. It is better than pr*n!
I wanna move to Berlin!
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Don't worry. That link to Sweden hooks on to NORDUnet, so you have a 2.5Gb link into GÉANT.
Academie Francaise (sorry to lazy to figure out the cedille and the accent on my US keyboard :)
What's KW short for? I only know WW:P And K2...and ...and
Oh sure, someone will probably say it means something in another language...
Which means that it doesn't mean shit. The only language that matters is English, and Americanized English at that.
I hate to break the news to you, but the world DOES revolve around America, you POS eurotrash.
Have you found ant German scat?
Perhaps their weathermap was just pruned for space... or does the network not have connections to NORDUNET (the backbone network that connects universities of nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland... and to other backbones like NSFnet or whatever it's called now)? Seems kind of weird if that is the case; the most connected countries in Europe not connected to this one?!
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Second, someone complained that they're only using a tiny percent of the bandwidth. Uhhh, the idea is to have SPARE capacity on a network. The three-way hook-up between Russia, Britain and the USA, for tele-surgery becomes actually practical for more than just extreme "he's very rich, but hasn't a hope in hell" cases. We might start seeing multi-national virtual operating theatres, capable of making use of a far wider range of skills than ever before possible.
IMHO, spending a few Euro more on slightly higher-quality fibre, and a few more frequencies of laser, is peanuts in terms of the total cost of a project like this, but offers the potential for fantastic endeavors that might actually benefit people.
The existing Internet would be fine, for most things, if it weren't loaded down with prawn and spam. However, it is, and we have to accept that. We also need to accept that the SERIOUS work on the Internet eats bandwidth for breakfast. When you're into real-time remote operation of a nuclear particle accelerator, online surgery, high-speed train emergency braking systems, etc, you really can't afford dropped packets, let alone serious lag.
Sure, AOLers can handle lag, just fine. What difference does an extra few minutes make, in a 2-hour download of a pirated DVD? Why the hell should they care about packet collisions or TCP retransmits?
But there are plenty of people, for whom a single packet collision could also be the last, if it happens at just the wrong moment. When you start talking about conditions like this, you absolutely need massive bandwidth. In fact, you really need three times that*.
(*It's a rule-of-thumb that network lag becomes significant, once you exceed one-third of the network's capacity. The odds of some form of data corruption, at that point, become too high to do even basic scientific work. You REALLY want the network to stay around the 1-5% region, for the high-end stuff.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Shipping products fron ciena, nortel etc can do
1.6 Tbits over single fiber. So what is exectly so cool here?
And to think I wasted my last moderator point on some dumbass troll, when I could have waited for your glorious post and given it the attention it deserves.
I'd forgotten that. Europe has a tiny land mass of 3,998,000 sq miles, whereas the USA has a massive land mass of 3,717,796 sq miles...
DAMN those facts! It's so much easier to spit off mindless hyperpole a la Rush Limbaugh than actually doing some research! Thanks, friend.
- Rev.At least he pointed where SSE2 was optimized, he did compare oranges with oranges as far as the x86 platform goes.
Tom missed the obvious comparing Intel-heavily-optimized-SSE2-scene (skull with radiosity) with Athlon like if it was a simple 3d benchmark (he never mentionned the SSE2 optimisation in the radiosity engine that newtek boosted in 7.0b). At least Ace points it out and points out the difference in the render pipeline, which I find VERY professionnal and reliable, tom sucked big time at it, he even got nice emails telling him how to best benchmark on lightwave to make his number constant and not falling into the "specifically optimized for x or y operation" and like he does best: he didn't listen and continued with his flawed benchmarking on the LW platform.
Kudos Ace.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Yes.
Lines to the US are the only ones being used at higher than 1%... my theory is that's the Slashdot effect of everyone on this side of the pond looking at their "weather map".
"Love is never saying you're too proud." -Tonic
What is this world coming to? Slashdot, usually known for it's levelheaded, facts-based postings (but only after everybody reads the articles) is having a US v. Europe thread. My god i never thought I would see that. At least it is well based in reality with little biased mudslinging being done.
(yup, this too, is sarcasm)
c'mon guys, how many times do we have to have the same discussion.
Some quick math shows the countries included in the GEANT project to have a combined land mass of 3,020,000 sq. km. The continental United States has a land mass of ~7,300,000 sq. km (excluding Alaska), but of course if you're talking about Europe then you might as well add Canada in there at another ~9,200,000 sq. km. Of course you are 100% correct: It is astounding how many standards Europe ratifies with the many languages, cultures, etc.
Having said that I said in another message that this really didn't seem all that big of a pipe, which of course rose the ire of defensive Europeans, yet take a look at http://www.psi.net/news/pr/00/dec13.html (that's from a year ago), http://www.x-changemag.com/hotnews/1bh754256.html. ..hell I can find dozens of carriers that have OC-192 or better backbones all over North America.
I had wondered why the link to my UK server suddenly nosedived. All the extra bandwidth is now DOSing the US transatlantic links...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
You need a lot of cash but they have 12 OC-3's I think. I cannot remember but I saw their billing record. So what is that? 45Gbps? lol.
Fuckin' US Corporations squashing academia, research and science, except when it profits the company line. Keep it out of the US. Keep everything out of the US. We're policing ourselves into a cold-war era USSR. We're burning our own books. Keep every thought out of the US s that we can gradually progress into a dark age and all be slaves for the elite. Soon we'll all be immigrating back to europe. Fucking windmill.
and I'm getting a 100 Mbit fiber to my house on SURFNET (= university network netherlands) in september. Thats better than the 2 Mbit I have right now.. (and only for EUR 10/month)
who here groaned and thought "well, timothy can't even spell giant" until they read the post?
While we were in Edinburgh, we went into one that was about a block off of Queen Street in Edinburgh. While the area where we were in was something that tourists would have enjoyed being, it seemed that a substantive number (definitely more than 50%) were locals with all the brogues and british accents that were present.
While it's not a representative sample by any stretch, it does disprove your generalization.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This was it. Everything would have been fine and dandy, until the submitter said, "and it's not even in the US!". There are many practical reasons why each region of the world needs its own high-speed research network. No regional defensiveness would have been felt if the person who submitted this hadn't started it.
There's a Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc... anyone know of a DOS or Windows equivalent utility?
Its fine to steal your money for corporate welfare. Your business model isn't working? Thats ok we'll just keep you alive so you can further mismanage the nations resources.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Not having accent marks is a STRENGTH, not a weakness. Why can't you just spell it GEANT? What's the difference between that and GÉANT? It's the same word. Can't the French learn pronounciations? Accent marks are useless and unnecessarily complicating.
Chinese has thousands of characters, look how hard they have it with keyboards, etc.
UMM - YOU MISS the point - if a mere 5,000 cable modem users could saturate it, and America has not thousands but millions of cable modem users, just where does that put europe indeed? face it, loser, europe will always lag behind america, the die was cast long ago. America lost more money in the WTC disaster and ensuing stock market drop ( you'll have to add in the dot com shit as well) then the ECU's GDP, for christ's sake.
At present, America's fibre optic networks are using LESS then 10% of their capacity - and just look how much less we pay for it then Euros do.
You people are so obviously jealous of americans - we usally just sit an smile at your pathetic, child like utternaces.
How can you not find it? It is everywhere!
Michael Loves Me!
ummm, Qwest has that much alone, hehehe-
l ut ions/hosting/fiberNetwork.html
http://www.qwest.com/largebusiness/products/eso
why? because it puts the 10 gig line into true perspective.
I guess Internet2 is nice in that it doesn't have to share traffic with the commercial Internet, but I still would've expected an academic network to have faster connections than what the rest of us get to use :)
According to this article
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"Internet2 plans to offer 10 gigabit capacity by 2003," says Marine Chartois of Dante. "By that time I think we will already be looking at 40 gigabits per second. That covers a larger area, more people and a much more difficult environment."
Well, the problem will be "what to do with 40 Gb/s ?".fuck yourself
"In Europe everything is more dense and closely located, so sure they can lay out the networking infrastructure for something like this easily
In the states? Not quite so easy... due to the simple fact of the size. Same reason we don't have GSM"
What a load of bollocks. Here in Australia we have a country 80% the size of the US with c. 5% of the population. And we have GSM as the main digital mobile standard.
The problem in the US is "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail". You're so fixated on applying the free market to everything that you forget that there are cases (notably in fundamental communications protocols) where it does *not* deliver an optimum solution. Like your chaotic and backward mobile phone system.
"Yes, Europe is slightly larger then us. However it's population is many times that of the US"
:-)
Another pig-ignorant American. Gee, this is like shooting fish in a barrel
I don't have exact figures but I'd very much doubt that European population exceeds that of the USA by more than 50%. It's certainly not "many times" the US.
Yes, Russia is a country.
So are Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and all the other members of the European Community.
The EC is a federation under construction and a very long-term project. It is a *colossal* achievement so far to bring together in peaceful cooperation a continent with such cultural differences and such a history of fratricidal warfare.
It is not yet a state in its own right. In twenty years' time, when members regard their individual nations as more like states in the US or Australia, maybe.
And who knows, maybe Russia will be a member by then!
Well, if the remark hadn't been in the article, some troll would have brought it up in a comment... which would promptly have been modded down to -1, Flamebait.
CA*NET 3 - CANARIE's National Optical Internet
Ok, dude...you got some major problems, don't you?
Please tell me they're not running IPv4 on it.
I do not get the big fuss over dvd rewritability, i own a CD-R/rw like everyone else but i have not purchased a cd-rw disk in like 4 years they were always more expensive and once i put data on a disc i usually didn't want to destroy it later anyway i can see in backup or something how it might be practical but with a disk that is only rated to be writen to 1000 times or so that does not make me comfortable. i think dvd-r is the future you can play it in most dvd drives players more then dvd+-rw can claim. as far as back up in dvd form dvd-ram kicks both the rewritable standards it can be rewritten like a 100times more than either one and the cartridge is nice protection i wish all dvds and cds had. my choice is a dvd-ram drive that writes dvd-rs and is scsi when will someone bring that out and market it correctly? rewritablity is over rated until the speeds get close to hard drives and the amount of times becomes near infinite.
Well whaddya know. The Slashdot Editor Spelling Bug rears it's ugly head again.
What's that? You say it's supposed to be spelled GEANT? My mistake. Sorry.
GEANT is not intended for high-speed home internet access, instead it is supposed to enable collaboration, and as a few have mentioned the distribution of data from the new CERN particle collider and GRID computing.