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A GEANT Leap Forward In Networking For Research

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the forget-the-plunger-build-new-pipes dept.

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."

11 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Will all these end up getting joined one day? by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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...

  2. Pronunciation? by The+Great+Wakka · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Gee-ahnt? Jeeant? How do you pronoune this silly, silly acronym?

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    Everything is mainstream now.
    1. Re:Pronunciation? by cymru1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well for a start it's not an acronym, it's the french word for giant. Pronunciation depends on what part of france you come from :)

  3. What? No Finland? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Why? Why??

  4. Re:And as you can see, it's not using even... by Marcus+Brody · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    They most definately will find uses for it. I heard recently about the transfer of raw sequencing trace files (for the Human Genome Project) transfered from the UK-->USA. Turns out there wasnt enough bandwidth (these things are basically huge image files, and there are ALOT of them). Therefore they ship them over on DAT tapes.

    Furthermore, I quite regurlarly download multi-gigabyte quantaties of data for academic research.

  5. Weathermap for Internet2/Abilene by tcyun · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You can check out the Internet2/Abilene weathermap at the Abilene NOC.

    Plus, the Internet2 backbone is moving to OC192 in the near term. Saturate that...

  6. It /does/ have a purpose by roryh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!

  7. Re:Doesn't really sound like that much... by Doomdark · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Yes, pathchar seems to be one of those invaluable cool tools that too few people know about. Used it succesfully back in '99... Too bad it was never officially 'finished' was it?

    Also, the presentation that explains how it works (which is reasonably straight-forward in theory, yet implementation seems quite sophisticated with some filtering done to remove noise from results) is worth reading. And for real "hard-core" network measurement stuff you can read the doctorate thesis Vern Paxson wrote, I think it's available from same download site... Good read if you really are interested about TCP performance analysis. The tool was (AFAIK) written for the thesis.

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    I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
  8. Where's NORDUNET? by Doomdark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?!

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    I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
  9. Re:Outside the US by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I dunno, the McDonald's in Thessaloniki, Greece was pretty packed, in a decidedly non-tourist area (the only reason I was there is because I have relatives in the area). There were quite a few in Belgium as well...

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  10. Re:Yes, but unfortunately... by Yokaze · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >Consumer use of the internet will still get most content from America
    I think your logic is a bit flawed.

    The pipes to the U.S. do not necessarily carry data originating from the U.S.

    It shows that a large amount of traffic is routed through the U.S.

    This may include data originating in the US, but also data from Europe. It may even include data originating from Europe and targeted for Europe.

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    "Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"