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Canada Builds World's Fastest Network
jd writes "Canada has just constructed an all-optical network, CA*Net3, capable of 80 gigabits per second (though being expanded to 20 terabits per second). This is over 60 times faster than the Internet 2 project, and according to the description, this will be open to the public, rather than closed as Internet 2 is. Anyone in Canada interested in building the world's most distributed high-performance Beowulf?"
Are you serious? Canada, a third world country!? That's news to me, and certainly news to Canada.
"That far north". What country do YOU think borders the US on the north? Have you ever BEEN in the northern US or anywhere NEAR Canada?
Do you really think there's some imaginary line that's drawn between the US and Canada where one second (in the US) it's warm, bright, sunny and technological and the next (in Canada) it's dark, cold, barren and they live in igloos?
That'd be a fun dance.
Canda (brr)
US (ooh)
Canada (bo-ring)
US (ooh)
*snort*
Join the weather channel. They don't think Canada "exists" either (the weather just *stops* at the border!).
-nicole
Is this new network being used for normal internet traffic as well? If not, why not? I mean, this kind of bandwidth would actually allow cable/ASDL/LAN users to use the whole bandwidth of their connection, rather than 10-50% as today...
;-)
I'm just wondering what my ping in Q3A would be on this network...
dufke
________________________________
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Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
Admittedly it's been a year since I lived in New Brunswick, and when I did, it was in Fredericton, not St. John, but the rates for fibre into your house were pretty prohibitive at the time. I looked into it and decided that my USR wasn't so bad after all. Especially when I saw what passes for "cable" modems there. ugh.
I agree that NBTel is pretty good about bringing new technology to the homes, but it still wasn't there a year ago, my Roger's connection is a _lot_ better than any of the connections my old friends in NB have. (And that should speak volumes for anyone living in Ottawa.)
-Joe
Eh. Why is American beer served cold?
So you can tell it from piss.
;-)
-Joe
19990829-1051.42
well, i always said that the canadians would (and in fact are) invade(ing) the united states. they can have it. with bandwidth like that i'm heading north. everyone may complain that it's cold up there, so what, it's hot as hell down here in florida. just think of it, i won't even need an industrial air conditioning unit to keep my machines cool. i can open the windows and use a ceiling fan! 8^)
as for what to use the bandwidth for, i don't know just yet, how about an amazing 42,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 player quake 3 arena game? anyone interested? now i just need a server farm for the needed processing power and my personal powerplant to power them all! ahhhh! just thinking about it makes me spooge...
Hmmm, I wonder what else comes from Canada?
you know what? stick you computer outside in the winter, and see if you can overclock it more! heh.. maybe that's why we can have the fastest networks lol (its 31C outside now, if you don't know what Celcius is, join the world and learn it)..
hmm, Canada is actually awesome for new technology to the public. I'd say its probably b/c its so widely spread, w/o that many people, we need a way to connect. so what better place to intro some new tech =8) there's a lot of room for it too (physically).. and a lot of places that aren't hooked up yet.
A great line about Canadians inventing the phone first goes like this...
"How come we know we created the phone first?
That day we called the U.S. and nobody answered"
Just having a bit of fun, as I am sure the original U.S. poster was, or hope.
Besides, nobody could be that ignorant / stereotypical...could they? Hmmm, I wonder.
I don't think the map shown in this article is in any way accurate. I live in Whitehorse (on the map) and I know for a fact all we've got running out of town right now is a T-3 over microwave.
Actually... on the canarie website, they have a probably accurate graphic.. Now it doesn't include Edmonton (*weep*).
Simple. We're the second largest country with about the 100th largest population (somewhat less than the other CA down south). Sending lots of information a long way really quick is kind of a specialty of ours.
-- I'm sure this is amusing to someone.
Is this just a super-backbone that connects to everyones 56k's or will this speed go directly to each home?
Canada Kicks Ass!
Jealously is not a virtue.
So we got the world's fastest network, eh? You American posers! Let's go watch "Strange Brew".
Join the weather channel. They don't think Canada "exists" either (the weather just *stops* at the border!).
Nope, if you look at those weather channel maps closely, you'll see that everything north of the U.S. border is white, which is because everything north of the U.S. border is burried under a ton of snow. (Honest! I can't even see out my window because of all that snow, and it's on the second floor! Really!) How exactly we manage to have that much snow when it's so darn hot out is beyond me, but when I look north across the border, I see that Detroit hasn't got any snow at all. Weird, eh?
(For those who don't know, Detroit (in Michigan) is north of Windsor (in Canada).)
Weren't the Japanese going to create an internet that went 1000 times faster than what we have right now?
Now that we've got this giant "library-in-a-second" capacity, we've got to fill it with piles of encrypted traffic.
But this is Canada... our government encourages that sort of thing...
Cool... I live just 8 blocks from the fastest network in the world..
:) (I'd probably have to move down the street :)
Hmm... I wonder how the best way to tap into that would be
Maybe it's just me, but if they're going to connect several of the largest machines together on this network to help calculate for the Genome project... maybe they should write a piece of distributed computing software to get the entire world involved. Follow in the footsteps of SETI.
Imagine using even 1% of the world's computing power. You'd have most of the genome project finished before the end of next year.
If anyone knows who to contact.... I'm more than willing to give them a call.
Is there any other place in Montreal then StCathrines Street?
Wow. I had no idea this existed, and I live in Canada and am a Computer Science major.
Maybe this means my university will scrap those stupid 14.4 dial-ups I used to have to use.
Hmmm... Rogers, if you are listening, maybe it's time to reduce those cable modem rates?
Everyone forgets that in computer neworking, delay (latency) is deadly - it's time that you can't get back. For Beowulf clusters to be effective across the widest range of parallel problems, they have to be packed together as closely as possible, to keep the node-to-node delays down to a minimum. Put another way: the more node-to-node communication required, the more that trivial increments in node-to-node communication delay will suck serious multiples of performance from the application.
A Canada-wide Beowulf cluster might work fine for RC5-64 cracking or SETI@HOME, but only because those problems require essentially no node-to-node communication, and the work-sets per node can be set arbitrarily large.
As for Canarie, they did a silly thing: they're using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), when they could be using raw SONET or SDH instead. ATM eats ten percent of the bandwidth right off the top, without adding any value at all. What could you do with an additional 8Gb/s out of the original 80Gb/s?
It's encouraging to see the strides that Canada and other third world countries have been making recently.
I honestly didn't realize that computers had made it that far north. Of course, where there are computers there's Gates. Don't let Canada become just another extension of Mikkkrosoft!
Welcome and Fight the Power!
Doubt any one cares about details this late in the stage but
They are going to do this using WDM, creating 32 different channs on the wire using different colors
l8r
- cyphunk
PS: This twiddler is freaking hard to type on!
Last school year I gave a report for my class on fiberoptic networking... if I remember correctly, they're doing preliminary tests in Atlanta Georgia on this sort of high speed hookup... if someone has any new information on this, I'd be very interested! I haven't heard any more about it since perhaps May. Do you guys think this sort of networking could potentially replace cable modems anytime soon? I know I'd subscribe! =)
--
That's backslashdot.ca you.. you.. you.. guy!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Are gov is... a lacky.
Are skool sistem, on the uthur hand, teeches speling verry wel.
An 80 gig network would never pass in the USA. Maybe in the Werner Von Braun age we would spend $billions on government projects but you can't even get $1 million for a satellite nowadays. In a way we're a lot more careful than other countries. The problem is that the CS majors who write internet software are more interested in the high bandwidth itself, seeing 1Meg/sec on their downloads, than devising any novel uses for it.
pr0n!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Chicago is listed on that map. WTF?
If Canada were a third world country i'd be drinking piss water and eating rice and I sure as hell wouldn't have a computer! Damn!
aujourd'hui.... c'est Pepsi!
GO HABS!
ON Y VA!
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
Please do not show any disrespect to the Avro Arrow. Thank you. The man says it was doing Mach 2. It was bloody well doing Mach 2 - or pretty well Terrence-and-Philliping close. The biggest what if in Canadaian history. Our national trauma. Where were you the day the Arrow was scrapped? Too bad PET wasn't PM when the Arrow was around. He wouldn't have scrapped it. He would've flown one around himself. (Not that PET didn't have his faults - it just would've been cool.)
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
It was retribution for an invasion by those itchy-trigger-fingered Americans.
Canada doesn't really go for beating up on other countries.
We try pretty hard to stay with the peacekeeper role. America seems to go with the enforcer role.
Canada just likes to remind the US that it doesn't win all of its fights. (And that winning a fight isn't that important, anyway).
The goalie mask
Pablum for babies
the paint roller
the snowmobile
Standard Time (i.e. modern system of time zones)
1/2 of Superman
The electric $^#%^ing light bulb!!! (1874) (Canadian Henry Woodward sold a share in his patent to Thomas Edison, who designed a more practical bulb in 1879. However, later on another Cdn Reginald Fessenden invented an even better version and its *his* model we *still* use today around the world. Edison was a middle man between two canucks baby!)
voice over radio
the best screwdriver: "the robertson"
sonar
many cancer-causing (oops) insect repellants
the Polyethylene Garbage Bag (can anyone say landfill?)
the Franks anti-gravity suit (G-suit) - (used by Allied WW2 pilots - later developed into more advanced G-suits)
IMAX movies
Trivial Pursuit
The Java programming language (in the US supported by US coworkers and a US multinational giant)
The Canadarm robotic space arm thing
the rollerskate
Insulin treatment for diabetics
the walkie-talkie
snowblower
electric streetcar
poutine
insulated coverings for indoor skating rinks
the zamboni
kerosene fuel
the McIntosh apple
Greenpeace
The English Patient (sorry guys)
shooting down the Red Baron
the idea of U.N. peacekeepers (blue helmets to you Euro-types)
wood-pulp paper (i.e. modern "paper")
*universal* medicare (Sask. was the first)
Nanaimo Bars
the heart pacemaker (an American later invented one that was much much smaller and could be implanted in the body - definately an improvemnt on the (very big) original)
the kidney dialysis machine
the electron microscope
ginger ale
Oka cheese (yum its so good I'm eating some right now as I hum the gens du pays)
gotta go (yes, I realize doing this was sad)
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
80Gbit doesnt mean you have all 80Gbit piped right into your house/dormroom/basement.
It just means that T1s and T3s will be provisioned much much cheaper, and your system surely can handle 1.5Mb or 45Mb easily.
Ya! You forgot to mention all the actors and comics who make Hollywood worthwhile. Remember the "Canadian Conspiracy"? Lorne Greene and Lorne Michaels? We also make the world's most secure operation system and the best verion of BSD-UNIX.
Makes me kinda proud, eh?
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
Infinite number wavelengths does not imply infinite bandwidth, the max thoretical bandwidth for an optical fiber is on the order of several 100Tb/s, still pretty big. Ok, back to the fun
stuff...
I still remember beer strikes during the summer (many years ago) when I was in Canada. The pits was when they ran out of everything Canadian and had to import from the states.
For complete details, consult http://www.canet2.net/
the NOC for this network
GO HABS GO! GO HABS GO!
--
Let's not all suck at the same time please
Let's not all suck at the same time please
And, though it is almost always overlooked, let's not forget the Robertson screwdriver (I hate those damned slot screws and Philips is nearly as bad)
For you americans you might be able to find a Robertson driver at Sears (I saw one there once in the states) and ask your canadian buddies to send you some descent screws (they'll know what you mean).
Aw crap! And I'm moving up there on Sat the 4th for University.. Guess the U of A won't be on this phat pipe =(
First, this network is using wave division multiplexing with 8 wavelengths to reach the 80 Gbits/sec. The article mentions that the network will go to 2000 wavelengths, or 20 Tbits/sec, in the future. However, the whole point is not that this is about a "technology being developed" but rather that this technology is being deployed, now, as in a physical network actually exists.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
of course, if you lived in residence in guelph (like me), you'd have a 10Mbps switched Ethernet connection right to your room. Yeah, res sucks, but cheap bandwidth is good.
(non UofGers: 100% of UGuelph residence is wired like this BTW... and it only costs $100/semester)
->www.chuma.org, ranting and Newtons, what more could you want?
That map is labeled "proposed".. (last updated Feb. 99)... isn't it supposed to be finished? ... maybe they made some changes?
UT? University of Tennessee? ;-> LOL
And that is at uncompressed rates!
Damn Canadians, them with their floppy little heads and beady little eyes. BLAME CANADA!
What?
I always thought that was a high-tech weather barrier put up by the Ministry of the Environment to keep all that hot weather south of the border.
Nice to see what can be done when you cut Ma' Bell out of the loop. Further proof that the telecos in the US are corrupt and don't serve the interest of their customers.
First hockey, then comedians and musicians, now the world's fastest network. How do I move to emigrate?
-Computers hate being anthropomorphized.
And to think, i work in the Computer Group here at U of T, I live less then 200 feet away, and have have canet3 bandwidth. what more could i ask for.
Canada, land of happy taxpayers. Huh? IT jobs for half the pay. Gasoline for twice the price and twice the distance to get there. No need to trash this country, it's already done for you, and we'll pay you to notice.
This message is from the End of the Line. And tomorrow I get my ADSL connection. No, there's nothing subsidized here. Nothing. We just pay and pay. And we LIKE it!
There is no doubt the telecom utility will slap a buck a meg tax on data traffic, and we'll just sit there and take it. No history of revolution against taxation here. We LIKE monopolists!
And at the same time, we practice survivalism on a permanent basis. We don't have to be wacos - I mean Wackos - to stock up on canned goods, rotate our stock, it's bred into us. A country that grew up on mail-order catalogs has been waiting a long time for the Internet to break through. So look out neighbours! A cultural bomb is about to blow!
Dudley Do-right
and don't get me throwing tomatoes at the centre of your being!
what the heck was that?
cheers
A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent. -- William Blake
Hey I didn't say he did or did not do good things. I just said he "looked" good doing what he was doing. By the way, the NEP rocked on! An excellent example of things going the way they should IMHO. He he.
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
I work at the University of Alberta and do work with the CanetII and CanetII syustems. While they are pulibc networks they are NOT commercial ones, check out the AUP on the site this link is for CanetII but will only change a little for CanetII to my understanding. Primarily access is given to educational institutions and research outfits which might benefit from and add quality to the the initiative. Although subject to change, it is a WDM GBE network connecting the different RANs (Regional Area Networks) together. Alberta is probably going to use dark fiber and light it up with multi-channel GBE as it's RAN backbone. All in all I feel this whole thing is pretty exciting and_I'M_ excited to be a part of it.
I love you... Ok I love you AND the UNIX operating system, but then I've know it longer.
Really? Canadians invented the Avro Arrow, the first aircraft to reach Mach 2+ (Americans were barely able to sustain Mach 1+). The Avro Arrow was the first aircraft which used the delta wing, a CANADIAN invention. When Avro Co. went bust (political in-fighting with the president of Avro and the Canadian prime minister lead to the literal destruction of these aircraft and their plans!) the americans hired all that Canadian brain power (instant visa's over night) to build their own military aircraft for Douglas, NASA, Boeing, etc - including the design for *your* space shuttle and the Concord. Bacon indeed.
I see you don't have an interest in world history, just the american version of it. Tisk tisk.
Anyone in Canada interested in building the world's most distributed high-performance Beowulf?"
Yes. I have been kicking this idea around for months. Any one else interested?
Mail me or call me in Vancouver.
hrmm... across campus (ie. from my room to the CS buliding) I often run thwack into the 10Mbps ethernet limit... also grabbing MP3s from my friends at U of T at 800KB/sec over CA*Net2 was schweet... can't wait only eight more days until I move in!
->www.chuma.org, ranting and Newtons, what more could you want?
Funny how Whitehorse is fully connected, but Calgary isn't even on the map.
Way to go, abcnews
Hands in my pocket
Got a 1040 tax instruction booklet from last year? Here's the breakdown:
- Income
- Personal Income taxes 46%
- Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment 34%
- Corporate Income Taxes 11%
- Excise, customs, estate, gift and other misc taxes 8%
- Borrowing 1%
- Outlays
- Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement 38%
- National defense, veterans, and foreign affairs 20% (actual breakdown: defense 16%, veterans benefits 2%, military/economic assistance, maintenance of US embassies, etc 2%)
- Social programs 18%
- Interest on the national debt 15%
- Physical, human, and community development 7%
- Law enforcement and general government 2%
If you look at the actual breakdown, we are spending more on social programs than on defense, and more on retirees than both combined. Your we spend so much money on defense line doesn't wash anymore. Since Clinton took office, spending on defense as a percentage of GDP has been halved.the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I, who work for an unnamed NSP with an OC-48 backbone (that's over 2 Gigabits/sec), have seen that one of the major limitations isn't the bandwidth, but being able to route the damn packets. Nobody really has routers yet that are too terribly stable at that high a bandwidth.
There's still a fair bit of dark fibre from the Qwest buildout, too...
IMHO, what's going to be one of the major bottlenecks in domestic networks is the local loop that goes to your house and getting local fiber from the CO to elsewhere - not the backbones.
Hehe..
;-)
The graphic on the article.. Doesn't include Calgary. That's comical, Regina is on there but Calgary isn't.
Hopefully it's just a case of not enough room on the pic
I;ve got a good use for the bandwidth: Netcasting all of the radio and TV stations that the CRTC won't allow because they lack "Canadian Content" Anything that pisses off the CRTC is good for everyone!
(I love seeing Edmonton on the map and not Calgary. Just makes my heart glow)
BTW: Even without the CA*Net3, Canada is still more wired than the USA.
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
Perhaps Canada is just gearing up so they can submit canadian stories to slashdot without saturating there network.
Or worse yet, canada puts up backslashdot.org and tries to backslashdot us.
This could be the reason why slashdot was down last night and this morning!
I think this is an act of war. :)
fou aje oym asoyf ueyf jaffaq afset su!6j!/\ op 'ua>|7!>| ppn7
This is the first totally optical network, which is pretty awesome... it involved a number of companies and government organizations working together, here is a quote from the site:
What they need now is applications for the network, if you're a student, tell your prof and see if you can't get something started!
How sweet it is to be Canadian!
Complexity Happens
The article mentions:
Canada's national human genome project, an effort to map all the DNA in the human body, is using CA*Net3 to link 40 powerful computers to perform necessary calculations.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Complexity Happens
If you actually read the article, you'd know it pounded in the point that there was not local demand for the bandwidth that CA*Net3 provides. If the article's wrong, correct it, but don't blame me for responding to the article.
I've always been impressed by my Canadian friends, remarkably insightful and well-educated. If you are Canadian, you sure are bringing down the average.
Ethernet in every dorm and 3 appartment complexes with 10Mbps ethernet. Well now, the university and two of those have to go through some state burocracy (called K20net) that's supposed to make internet to schools better but actually makes things pretty freaking slow. WSU also has/is getting Internet2 but that's only departmental access.
So looks like the one appartment complex I'm in is has the best net access in Pullman... oh did I mention the rent didn't increase one bit as a result? Too bad the service is horrible. (someone want to help me set up a news box? they won't do it, but have the newsfeed)
Actually my friend and I were working on a way to get 4mbs download time over a 56k voice modem. It worked in theory. Basicaly use tonal frequncies and chords to represent 32bit bytes. Ok It's not near as cool as those damm Frenchies.
Do you really want to be a US citizen when the next draft comes allong? ;->
It's like having a ferrari in a driveway leading to terminally potholed roads!!!
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
I knew there was some reason I have not moved to the States... although I must admit I enjoyed the weather during the 4.5 months I lived in Irwine&Westlake.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
I hope this increases our chances of getting our genes into the public domain before one of the private efforts succeeds and claims the inevitable patents.
Mind the Gap
Now that we've got this giant "library-in-a-second" capacity, we've got to fill it with piles of encrypted traffic. The spy agencies will feel compelled to log, crack, and filter it all, thus consuming more resources and reducing the chance that they'll get up to naughty tricks in their (vastly reduced) spare time.
I think it's safe to say that they've got their listening devices hooked up. It'd be fun to turn on the firehose and rip their lips off.
Mind the Gap
Everyone in Canada complains about the taxes, it's a national pastime ... ... wow!
... but then, everyone can say the same no matter WHERE they're at.
...
But when you see what those taxes GET US
I mean, I'm not worried that I'll be financially ruined if I'm ever hospitalized, I can realistically own my own home, and now this!
Sure, there are things I'd like to see changed
Now if only I could get DSL or cable out here in the woods
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
..that blows the doors off almost all imported stuff.
Only because good stuff is not imported. It is still piss compared to good German thing...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Oh, uh, let's see what else came from the Great White North....
-Reginald Fessenden, Canadian transmits the worlds first voice message in 1900: AM Radio!
-Avro's Jetliner was North America's first jetliner in 1949
-IMAX projector & camera
-standard time
-the TELEPHONE
-the electric cooking range
-Pablum
-Figher pilot's G-suits
-World's first combine harvester
-Pulp paper plants
-Macinstosh Apples
-Zippers
-electron microscope
-Cable TV
-Basketball and Hockey
-insulin
-Vortex lamp, the world's brightest light source
-the Avro Arrow and the Orenda Iroquois turbojet, which kicked ass on every other fighter in the world
-the engineers from the Avro Arrow who went down to NASA to help get Neil on the moon
-Captain Edwards (the first engineer+test pilot for which Edwards Airforce Base is named), Mr. Gosling of Java fame, James Cameron, of T1, T2 fame and also Titanic, only the most successful movie ever, Pamela Lee Anderson, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Mike Myers
-the snowmobile
-the electric wheelchair
-Commodore 64's
-the Wonderbra?
-the Canadarm used on the shuttle
-the safest and most efficient nuclear reactor designs in the world
-the (questionable) V-Chip
-the only country who knows how to build nukes and chooses not to
-the No.#1 country in the world 6 years running
Oh, is the list getting too long? I better stop for now. I'm sorry, I guess not everyone is privy to the fastest national network in the world.
... and Czech beer is also worth considering
Wavestar is a technology being developed by Lucent technologies that uses Wave division Multiplexing to transmit data over a fiber at 400Gbits/second. Check this out for more information. Granted, it's FOR SONET/SDH, which means that to do IP you have to do IP over ATM and then put the ATM signal over SONET, but it still blows 80Gbits out of the water.
Hell, if nothing else, they could lease out cheap bandwidth from New York to Seattle, at least until they have the demand for it themselves.