We are talking about Esnet, the energy sciences network of the United States Department of Energy, which is already the fastest Internet network in the world thanks to its bandwidth of 46 Terabits per second.
To put it into perspective, ESnet6 is 46,000 times faster than a high-speed connection of one Gbps.
“ESnet6 represents a transformational change in the way networks are built for research, with improved capacity, resiliency and flexibility,” ESnet CEO Inder Monga said in a press release. “Together, these new capabilities make it faster, easier and more efficient for scientists around the world to conduct and collaborate on groundbreaking research.”
The Esnet network connects all of America’s laboratories, DOE-funded researchers, and DOE’s world-class scientific instruments and supercomputing centers and is intended to accelerate scientific advances.
The new Esnet6 network, made up of 4,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables with network backbones ranging from 400 Gigabit per second to 1 Terabit per second and has advanced overall network security, and even a future programmable API platform is planned for scientists , it can transfer data between 400 Gbps and 1 Tbps (as a curiosity, in 2021, ESnet transferred more than 1.1 exabytes of scientific data).
“ESnet exemplifies the value of Berkeley Lab’s ‘team science .’ Our partnerships with all DOE national laboratories, vendors, global research and education networks, and academia were essential to the design and construction of this important infrastructure for the Department of Energy while overcoming the challenges of the pandemic and resulting supply chain delays,” Monga continued.
This enhancement will allow scientists to transfer data sets produced by experiments using large-scale instruments, such as genome sequencers, telescope observatories, X-ray light sources, and particle accelerators.
“With ESnet6, DOE researchers are equipped with the most sophisticated technology to help meet the big challenges we face today in areas like climate science, clean energy, semiconductor production, microelectronics, science discovery of quantum information and more,” Helland concluded.
