The Internet drag race

The Internet2 consortium members from California Institute of Technology and CERN developed effective fiber optic network, sending data upto 11,000 kilometers between Caltech's LA laboratories and CERN's campus in Geneva at a rate of 6.25 Gb/s. The 68,431 terabit- meters per second data transfer was accomplished using the IPv4 protocols that power the public Internet. Network run by Internet2, called Abilene maintains the highest capacities in the world, connecting dozens of GigaPOP's with OC-192c 10 Gb/s Ip backbone. The member institutions of Internet2 keep Abilene 10% to 15% full, but the researchers also use the network as a base for the latest Internet technologies and experiments, which include development of IPv6. (Edited abstract).