China Unicom Completes Record-Breaking Data Transmission Over 3000 Kilometers

On May 16, TapTechNews reported that China Unicom announced today that China Unicom Group organized Unicom Research Institute, Zhongxun Design Institute, Shanghai Branch, Ningxia Branch, and other units to work together to complete the first successful transmission of a massive amount of data over a distance of more than 3000 kilometers, achieving wide-area high-throughput lossless transmission.

In scenarios of intelligent computing and supercomputing, the timely transmission of terabytes of massive data through traditional bandwidths of hundreds of megabits or gigabits is difficult to meet the requirements. The efficient and lossless transmission of massive data has always been a challenge in the industry.

This time, based on China Unicom's nationwide backbone all-optical ROADM network and 169 backbone Internet, in the typical scenario of East Data and West Computing where training data for Shanghai's intelligent computing business is imported into the training cluster in Zhongwei, Ningxia, tests were conducted on innovative network capabilities such as IPv6+, new transport layer protocols, long-distance lossless transmission using RDMA, and end-to-end collaborative transmission. The actual transmission distance exceeded 3000 kilometers, and the pilot program set several industry records:

- The first achievement of task-based transmission of massive data over 3000 kilometers on an IP-based network, increasing the transmission distance by 30% compared to existing records.

- The first achievement of cooperative transmission capabilities in multiple locations based on SRv6 (Segment Routing IPv6, a new generation IP transport protocol based on IPv6 forwarding plane).

- The first achievement of on-network verification of long-distance RDMA flow transmission based on lossless flow control using OTN and end-to-end congestion control, increasing the port bandwidth utilization rate from 20% to over 90%.

Tang Xiongyan, Vice President of China Unicom Research Institute and Chief Scientist, stated that by creating task-based data transmission capabilities based on IP and optical network technology, terabytes of massive data can be delivered in around one minute, effectively solving the problems of low bandwidth taking days to transmit and high bandwidth dedicated lines being too costly to afford.