UC Davis recently helped test a new high-speed link between the United States and China, transferring 24 gigabytes of data from Beijing to Davis in 30 seconds.

In the demonstration, involving BGI, the world’s largest genomics organization, and the UC Davis Genome Center, the data went from Beijing to the university at a rate approaching 10 gigabits per second, equivalent to moving more than 5,400 Bluray discs in a day. One gigabyte is equal to eight gigabits.

A file of the same size sent over the public Internet a few days earlier took more than 26 hours. 

The data transfer took place June 22 to demonstrate a 10-gigabit-per-second fiber-optic connection installed by the Internet2 consortium and supported by Internet2, the China Education and Research Network, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and Indiana University.

“The 10-gigabit network connection is even faster than transferring data to most local hard drives,” said Dawei Lin, director of the Bioinformatics Core at the Genome Center. “It will enable scientists in the genomics-related fields to communicate and transfer data more rapidly and conveniently.”

As the cost of DNA sequencing falls, the amount of data generated is growing at an unprecedented pace. How to conveniently share this tremendous volume of data has become a significant bottleneck for researchers.

The new data link may be especially useful for BGI and UC Davis, which recently formed a partnership, BGI@UCDavis, with a facility on the university’s Sacramento campus. Through BGI, campus researchers will have access to the capabilities and expertise of one of the world’s premier genomics and bioinformatics institutes, while BGI researchers will be able to collaborate with UC Davis researchers, benefiting from the university’s resources and expertise in biology, medical sciences, agriculture, the environment and education.

“BGI is excited to demonstrate this achievement and looks forward to the potential opportunity to incorporate this breakthrough into our service capabilities to facilitate more rapid and efficient exchange of big genomic data globally,” said Xing Xu, director of cloud computing for BGI.

Anticipating the "Big Data" needs of its researchers, UC Davis has in recent years installed 10-gigabit-per-second links on campus and to its Internet service provider, said Mark Redican, director of Communications Resources in Information and Educational Technology. Redican worked on the project with IET network architect Rodger Hess.

“Having this foundation in place allowed the 10-gigabit connection to be provisioned quickly. We look forward to building on this experience to support further state-of-the-art global research collaborations,” Redican said.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of the National Library of Medicine, also participated in the test. Aspera Inc. of Emeryville provided software to support the data transfers.

Internet2 is a consortium that has established a dedicated high-speed data network connecting major U.S. research labs and universities. The Internet2 network is not accessible by the general public.