Internet speed record broken twice in one week

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A group of academics, led by boffins from the University of Tokyo, have broken the internet speed record, but not just once, it was announced this week by Internet2, the networking consortium that brings leaders together to help ensure the future success of the web.

Teams competed to demonstrate the highest bandwidth end-to-end networks to be awarded with the Internet2 land speed record (I2-LSR).

In the first record-breaking success, a network path spanning more than 30,000 kilometres was created, crossing six international networks equivalent to more than three-quarters of the earth's circumference.

Using standard TCP, data was successfully transferred in the single and multi-stream categories at a rate of 7.67Gbps.

Then, the following day, the team used a modified version of TCP to go one step further. The same network path was used, but this time data was transferred at a rate of 9.08 Gbps.

The record smashes show that IPv6 networks are more than capable of providing as good as, if not better, performance than IPv4, according to Internet2.

"These records are final for the 10Gbps network era because they represent more than 98 per cent of the upper limit of network capacity," said Dr. Kei Hiraki, professor at the University of Tokyo and LSR team leader.

"Through collaboration by a number of institutions, we have demonstrated the ability

to overcome the distance and achieve this newest mark."

In addition to the University of Tokyo, a number of other institutions made up the winning team, including WIDE Project, NTT Communications, JGN2, SURFnet, CANARIE and Pacific Northwest Gigapop.

The records were broken at the end of last year, but Internet2 only went public with the announcement this week at its annual spring members meeting.

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