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The Internet Operating Systems Communications BSD

NetBSD Sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record 336

Posted by timothy from the showoffs dept.
Daniel de Kok writes "Researchers of the Swedish University Network (SUNET) have beaten the Internet2 Land Speed Record using two Dell 2650 machines with single 2GHz CPUs running NetBSD 2.0 Beta. SUNET has transferred around 840 GigaBytes of data in less than 30 minutes, using a single IPv4 TCP stream, between a host at the Luleå University of Technology and a host connected to a Sprint PoP in San Jose, CA, USA. The achieved speed was 69.073 Petabit-meters/second. According to the research team, NetBSD was chosen 'due to the scalability of the TCP code.'"

"More information about this record including the NetBSD configuration can be found at: http://proj.sunet.se/LSR2/
The website of the Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) competition is located at: http://lsr.internet2.edu/"
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NetBSD Sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record More

NetBSD Sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record

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  • Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:34PM (#9046423) Homepage Journal
    ...but don't the three main BSD projects use pretty much the same TCP/IP stack?

  • That'll learn em. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Maradine ( 194191 ) * on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:34PM (#9046427) Homepage
    Fools, BSD is dea . . . oh, wait, what?

  • No matter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:35PM (#9046442)
    They will still get slashdotted.

  • Question... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 8tim8 ( 623968 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:37PM (#9046470) Journal
    SUNET has transferred around 840 GigaBytes of data in less than 30 minutes

    Does this mean we've broken the "station wagon loaded with DVD's" barrier yet?

    • Re:Question... (Score:5, Funny)

      by AhBeeDoi ( 686955 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:41PM (#9046502)
      Does this mean we've broken the "station wagon loaded with DVD's" barrier yet?
      Not quite. However, we're appproching the Mini-Cooper barrier.

    • Can we get a Uhaul trailer? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by raehl ( 609729 ) <raehl311@@@yahoo...com> on Monday May 03, 2004 @08:00PM (#9046668) Homepage
      That depends on whether the DVDs are in cases or not I think.

      At 9.4 GB per DVD (Assume single-layer double-sided DVD-R), and a travel time of 3 weeks from Sweeden to California (2 weeks on the boat, one week of driving), you'd need to get about 90,000 DVDs in your station wagon to get an effective 1680 GB/hr. That wouldn't be possible if they were in cases, but if it was just the DVDs, it's probably a close call. Might have to upgrade to dual-layer DVD's, or change the saying to "an SUV full of DVD's".

      On the other hand, if you count the time to actually read the data off of the DVDs (even worse if you count the time to put the data on the DVDs too), the station wagon of DVD's barrier was broken long ago - you probably couldn't spin a DVD fast enough to get 9.4 GB of data off it in 20 seconds.

    • Does this mean we've broken the "station wagon loaded with DVD's" barrier yet?

      We just worked this out...

      A Saturn Ion station wagon with the back seat folded down, full of LTO2 tapes, is 418 petabit m/s at 60 MPH, or about 6 times more bandwidth.

      And about $600k worth of tapes.

      • 79 cu ft with back seat folded down
      • LTO dimentions 21.5 x 105.4 x 102 mm
      • Rest is just math....

      You can work out the DVD bandwidth yourselves.

      Latency sucks, though.

  • WOOHOO ! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sonic McTails ( 700139 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:37PM (#9046473)
    We can now DoS sites at even faster speed !

  • Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:38PM (#9046482) Homepage Journal
    What is a petabit-meter? How is it a significant measure of transmission speed?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:47PM (#9046547)
      What is a petabit-meter?

      Think of it like 3 meters per acregallon of footyards/second divided by hectares per ohm.
    • My guess is that it's petabits times meters (as in physical distance between the machines). Which seems kind of stupid -- if the distance makes any real difference, something is wrong. How about communicating with Voyager II -- then you could get some real numbers, even at modem speeds!

      Plus, I'm betting it's not a "land" speed record, seeing as how the data probably jumps through the air (satillite/microwave transmissions) at one or more points. (Not to mention the fact that being on, over, or under the

      • Re:Well, not having RTFA... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 03, 2004 @08:02PM (#9046684)
        I'm betting it's not a "land" speed record, seeing as how the data probably jumps through the air (satillite/microwave transmissions) at one or more points.

        Nope. The vast majority of phone & data runs over fiber, without satellite or microwave. The latency on satellite is much worse, & microwave is more expensive. Fiber is the first choice.

        (Not to mention the fact that being on, over, or under the surface of land or water means nothing to a data cable.)

        Well, back when I worked for JDS Uniphase during the tech boom, there was a world of difference. Getting parts qualified for underwater cables was much harder. The cable owners don't want to have to send out a ship to pull a cable up off the ocean floor to fix it - it's very very expensive.

        JDS had to guarrantee that they would make no changes in its production process without the approval of the customer, and JDS had to get similar guarrantees from its suppliers. Of course, JDS charged a lot more for undersea components, but reliability was much more important than cost.

        And many customers would demand that the parts be made in North America - they wouldn't accept made in China or Taiwan.

        Sigh. I miss working at JDS.

        • And many customers would demand that the parts be made in North America - they wouldn't accept made in China or Taiwan.

          Sigh. I miss working at JDS.

          I guess they accept parts from China or Taiwan now : )
      • ...if the distance makes any real difference, something is wrong.

        One of the biggest problems in networking is handling a large bandwidth-delay product (that's the amount of data in flight at once). Since distance increases the delay it is relevant.

        Plus, I'm betting it's not a "land" speed record, seeing as how the data probably jumps through the air (satillite/microwave transmissions) at one or more points.

        Nope. Think about it: what kind of wireless connection can handle 4 Gbps?

        • Long Fat Pipe (Score:3, Funny)

          by bsd4me ( 759597 )

          One of the biggest problems in networking is handling a large bandwidth-delay product (that's the amount of data in flight at once). Since distance increases the delay it is relevant.

          If anyone cares, a connection with a large bandwidth delay product is sometimes called a long fat pipe. A good networking book should discuss this. I think Steven's TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 has a section on it(my copy is at work.)

        • One operating on multiple frequencies and multiplexed.
        • Nope. Think about it: what kind of wireless connection can handle 4 Gbps?


          Unm...a really really good one?

          (One operating on a frequency of 8GHz or more?)
      • Plus, I'm betting it's not a "land" speed record, seeing as how the data probably jumps through the air (satillite/microwave transmissions) at one or more points.

        One of the insurmountable limitations of geosynchronous satellite communications is the nearly 45,000 mile trip the signal needs to take getting from point A to point C. It introduces a delay of almost a quarter second, and the signal attenuation over that distance limits how much data can be sent reliably. Surface-to-surface microwaves suffer

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's a measure of transport capacity.

      "Analogous to man-miles/year considered by airlines"

      And like the anonymous comment above mine, also analogous to gigabit-miles/hour.

      A search of bit-meters [google.com] gives you some references, however helpful they actually may be.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by jcuervo ( 715139 )
      What is a petabit-meter? How is it a significant measure of transmission speed?
      Presumably, it's the time it takes to transfer a petabit of information over one metre.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dodger73 ( 654030 )
      What is a petabit-meter? How is it a significant measure of transmission speed?

      I'd think a petabit-meter is the transfer of one petabit of data over a distance of 1m. That's significant, because transfer takes longer (and is less reliable) over a greater distance. Think switching times, packet routing and other latencies, and of course the short time the signal needs to travel halfway around the globe.
      In other words, transferring 1 pb over 1 meter in one second is considered the same 'achievement' as 0.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

      by kevman42 ( 681617 )
      Consarnit, I won't care until they start measuring it in furlongs per fortnight or hogsheads to the barrel!

  • Why TCP... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Handpaper ( 566373 )
    when UDP has so much less overhead [whnet.com]?

  • compression (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sir_cello ( 634395 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:42PM (#9046513)

    Did they check for any inband compression? They data they're sending isn't randomised.

    • Wait, you mean a quadrillion squared bitmap doesn't count?

  • 466 MB/s (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikeD83 ( 529104 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:42PM (#9046519)
    840GB/30 minutes = 466 MB/s, or 3,728 Mbps

  • Mandatory RIAA/MPAA Comment (Score:5, Funny)

    by FlameboyC11 ( 711446 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:45PM (#9046541)
    Somebody should show Valentini [slashdot.org] this, I wonder what he'd say...

    Val: "You students transfered how much?"
    Sunnet: "About 30 movies a minute"
    Val: "Un-fucking beli-Oh wait, I already said that..."

  • Nothing like.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by cmacmanus ( 713176 ) * on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:46PM (#9046543) Homepage
    ..transferring 840 gb of swedish porn across the pond. ;)

  • How long till we can use it? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:46PM (#9046546)
    When is this supposed to be available for the average joe to use?

    Also, what measures (if any) have they taken to combat the current internet's limitations and vulnerabilities?
  • Sorry, but I've seen much higher rates of it than this.
  • I've heard that joke, "never under estimate the bandwidth of a 78 chevy and a box of hard drives," but now I don't know about that one anymore.

  • I've always wondered about Internet2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aerojad ( 594561 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @07:52PM (#9046594) Homepage Journal
    So, is this just using a secure connection on our internet, or did they go ahead and string up an all new internet for no one but theirselves to be on? I don't really see the point of the latter - why not dump the money into vastly improving the current internet and stomping out spammers and things that make the place bad?
    • The Internet2 is a separate network running on IPv6. Currently it is being developed and tested between a veriety of universities, ballsy ISPs and a few buisnesses. Simply upgrading the current internet won't solve many of the problems. (like multicast) Supposedly once internet2 is doing really well, isps will slowly migrate until the old network is mosly gone.

      Note, there are bridges between internet1 and internet2.
      • Well, on a completely different network then:

        It's no wonder such a kickass internet speed record could be set with superfast computers and near-zero net congestion...

      • Re:I've always wondered about Internet2 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 03, 2004 @09:27PM (#9047347)
        Internet2 is a separate network in the same sense that Sprint and UUNET are separate networks. It's funded for academic use, and has a rigourously-enforced AUP which results in it not being used for commercial purposes at all. It is not an upgrade of the current Internet. The name "Internet2" does not signify "the replacement for the Internet"; if you're being charitible, it means "let's see how people use a multi-gigabit network if they don't have to pay for traffic". If you're being mean, it means "let's see if we can attract federal funding by sounding like we're exciting and important."

        Many commercial networks (Level3 and UUNET spring immediately to mind) run commercial networks which are far closer to the bleeding edge than Internet2 is, in terms of the complexity of the routing system and the forwarding path. There are commercial operators who operate parallel 8xOC192 circuits which are routinely filled to near-congestion conditions 80% of the time (yes, that's an aggregate of 80Gbit/s between just two sites). The Internet is orders of magnitude more complex and advanced in terms of forwarding capacity than Internet2. There are commercial ISPs who sell production IPv6 services. There are more commercial ISPs who sell production IPv4 multicast services.

        No ISPs will migrate to Internet2, since Internet2 is funded specifically for non-commercial traffic. There are no "bridges" between the private network known as "Internet2" and the Internet in the way that you imply; there are simply universities who are connected both to the private network called "Internet2" and to the Internet via commercial providers.

        The private network known as "Internet2" is not an IPv6-only network. It does not feature a policy of shipping IPv4 traffic purely encapsulated within IPv6.

        Hope this clears up a couple of things.
    • From my understanding, it's sort of a separate network. But obviously, many routers are on both. It's just that if requests come from computers on I2, then they get I2 access. However, those not on I2 don't get the same benefits. Of course, I could be wrong.

      It's still amazing the advancements. I remember several years ago when it would take up to 40 minutes to burn a CD (on my $400 CD burner). Now, I can go to the library at Michigan State (I live in university apartments without I2 access) and downl
      • Im glad Purdue is fast to somewhere, cause I live off campus, and it's faster to pull stuff from North Carolina than from csociety, 3 blocks away. Csociety incidently is actually just a dell pc sitting on top of a filing cabinet in the IEEE lounge, in the basement of the EE building. If you plug into the right subnet in EE, its fast.

  • petabyte-meters!? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 )
    I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a somewhat useless measure? I mean, I suppose that the longer a link is, the more interference, but really, seems like a rather pointless mesure to me.

    • Re:petabyte-meters!? (Score:3, Informative)

      by forsetti ( 158019 )
      Well, this is the "Land Speed" record, so distance does matter to some degree. This makes it useful to compare against the "bandwidth of a station wagon" -- more of a comparison of amount and distance over time.
    • It is useless only in that it is meaningless. The ability to reach high levels of bandwidth using a protocol with guaranteed delivery over long distances is a goal we have been chasing to ever-higher numbers ever since we invented ways for computers to talk to one another. First someone said, wouldn't it be cool for these two computers to be able to exchange information without human intervention? And then someone came up with, well, I want them in separate buildings, one thing led to another, and now here

  • Air speed record (Score:4, Funny)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) * on Monday May 03, 2004 @08:17PM (#9046784) Journal
    still held by Norway [linux.no]

  • DOSed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Veramocor ( 262800 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @08:25PM (#9046843)
    Man I hate to be on the recieving end of a Denial of Service attack on Internet 2. 900 gigabytes of data /30 min from multiple sourses would be crushing.

  • They done it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Monday May 03, 2004 @08:53PM (#9047081) Homepage
    They Stole Sprint's DS-3 cards! [slashdot.org]

  • Linux Stack vs. *BSD stacks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Monday May 03, 2004 @09:00PM (#9047131)
    How different is the Linux stack that the *BSD stacks? Is there that large a performance difference?

    And a better question, if NetBSD has a better stack, why doesn't Linux just adopt it? After all, it *is* BSD license..

    Or is it just good old pride getting in the way again?

    • There's more than one way to skin a cat

      I think that answers the question somewhat

    • Re:Linux Stack vs. *BSD stacks (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You'll see pride in action when this gets moderated into the bitbucket, as all Linux-friendly posts in the Slashdot BSD secion are. But anyway...

      Linux has often been used to set records. The sure way to see Linux trashing BSD is to add more CPUs. Linux scales tolerably well to 512 processors now! The Linux IP stack is very well suited to SMP.

      This NetBSD record is really about having insanely great Internet connections separated by thousands of miles.

      Long ago, the Linux developers did look into adoptin

      • Actually, the Linux IP stack buffer handling have a number of problem that the BSD stack do not suffer from. One is the inability to use a number of linked buffers in one packet (the "mbuf" style) so it allocates skbuff's (on a power-of-2-basis), another is that it must always do (at least) one datacopy even on transmission. This will result in that a machine with the Linux IP stack runs out of CPU much faster than with a BSD IP stack.
  • Any thoughts on why they chose to use Dell 2650s?

  • Why NetBSD was chosen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 03, 2004 @09:27PM (#9047350)
    They might claim that NetBSD scales best, but it took some code changes to get it to do so (which have since been picked up and are included in the base).

    The REAL reason for why they picked NetBSD is that Ragge (Anders Magnusson), the person doing a fair chunk of the testing, is heavily involved in the project and knows the code base. It was simply easiest to work with for him. :-)

    • Re:Why NetBSD was chosen (Score:5, Informative)

      by ragge ( 776768 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @05:34AM (#9049422)
      Actually, we did tests with Linux (both 2.4 and 2.6) and FreeBSD also, but with not as good results. Linux IP stack eats much more CPU (and memory!) than it should. Basic problem is the network buffer implementation (or the lack of!). This is true for both 2.4 and 2.6. A redesign is needed of the IP stack to make it perform better. FreeBSD have a lot of linear searches in their IP stack left, fixing that would most likely give the same result as for NetBSD. I may port over some of the NetBSD changes if I get some spare time. NetBSD had already fixed (most of) those problems, some of them long ago, therefore it was simple to just use it.

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