TOKYO -- Engineers in Japan, Canada, United States, The Netherlands, and CERN Switzerland completed the world's longest native 10Gigabit Ethernet circuit for the transmission of data from the Japanese Data Reservoir project to the CERN research center in Geneva, Switzerland. The length of this light path is approximately 18,500 km and spans 17 time zones.

This international cooperative project pushes the boundaries of global research and education networking and lays a foundation for a new array of international research opportunities.

Using 10Gigabit Ethernet WAN PHY technology a local area network connecting computers at the University of Tokyo was extended to include computers at CERN so that they all appeared to be on the same LAN. The connection from the University of Tokyo to T-LEX was provided by the WIDE project. From T-LEX, the circuit was passed to Seattle using a wavelength donated by Tyco Telecommunications through the IEEAF, and cross connected through facilities provided by Pacific Northwest Gigapop in Seattle. From Seattle the circuit was then carried across a dedicated lambda on the CA*net 4 network to the Chicago StarLight. At StarLight, the interconnect to SURFnet's Chicago-Amsterdam lambda was made, taking the connection to NetherLight in Amsterdam. Finally, between NetherLight and CERN, SURFnet's Amsterdam-Geneva lambda was used.

The network connection involved interconnecting optical lambdas across equipment from a variety of vendors including Foundry Networks, Nortel Networks and Cisco Systems. This is believed to be the first demonstration of the interoperation of 10Gigabit Ethernet WAN PHY and optical SONET/SDH equipment from these vendors.

The 10Gigabit Ethernet connection will be used by the Data Reservoir/GRAPE-DR project of the University of Tokyo to test the optimization and transfer of larger TCP data flows across such a long fat pipe facility. Such transfers are of particular relevance to the ATLAS experiment at CERN's future Large Hadron Collider, where the University of Tokyo is contributing a data analysis center. The data transfer is achieved between a pair of data-sharing systems Data Reservoir placed at the University of Tokyo and CERN. An average transfer rate of 7.57 Gbps was achieved for a single TCP stream, using standard Ethernet frames, between two high-end servers equipped with Chelsio T110 10Gigabit Ethernet adapters.

The Data Reservoir system also achieved a 9 Gbps disk-to-disk data transfer with 9 Xeon servers at each end of the connection. This performance figure has not been reported before on an intercontinental disk-to-disk situation.

This networking experiment complements and supports activities underway in the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF). Most of the participants in this effort are also participants in GLIF.

The demonstrations were made possible through the support of the following manufacturers, who have generously contributed their equipment and knowledge: Foundry Networks, Nortel Networks, Chelsio Communications, Cisco Systems, Bussan Networks, and Net One Systems.

We acknowledge the support of: the European Union project ESTA (IST-2001-33182), CERN OpenLAB, SARA, Global Crossing, Industry Canada, NTT Communications, Special Coordination Fund for Promoting Science and Technology, MEXT, Japan, and ITC of the University of Tokyo.