Recently, China has launched the world's first 1.2T (transmission rate of 1200G bits per second) ultra-high-speed next-generation internet backbone route. This backbone route, spanning over 3000 kilometers, connects Beijing, Wuhan, and Guangzhou. It is a significant technical trial achievement of the Future Internet Testbed (hereinafter referred to as FITI) project. It is an important part of the national major scientific and technological infrastructure, the Future Network Test Facility, jointly developed by Tsinghua University, China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., and CERNET Network Information Center.

"This backbone route is also an important part of the FITI high-performance backbone network. The upgrade of the internet backbone route to the T-level is of great significance for a large-scale internet test platform like FITI," said Wu Jianping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the person in charge of the FITI project, to a reporter from Science and Technology Daily. "This route is not only a successful exploration and practice of the unity and cooperation of all participating units in the project to achieve technological independence and strength, but also provides important technical reserves for China to build an ultra-high-speed next-generation internet, and will become an important contribution of China to the development of the global next-generation internet."

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So, what exactly is the FITI project? What is the significance and technical advantages of the FITI project?

Significant advantages in performance, power consumption, and other aspects

"The FITI project aims to provide an internationally leading open test environment for research and design of various innovative future network architectures. It is another major internet experimental platform jointly developed by Tsinghua University and 40 other universities following CERNET (China Education and Research Network) and CERNET2," said Wu Jianping. The FITI project adopts a joint research model of university unity and cooperation, is a national major test infrastructure facing the future internet, and will become the scientific and technological support for the construction of a network power.

According to the plan, FITI mainly uses pure IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) technology to build and operate an unprecedented large-scale network science test facility that is open to the public at home and abroad, and will be well connected with the scientific and technological innovation base in the future. At the same time, universities will carry out network architecture innovation based on FITI, and the innovative achievements obtained will be used for the rolling development of FITI. In addition, the FITI project will establish an alliance of university and industry-university-research network architecture innovation test users. After five years of effort, the FITI project has basically completed the main construction tasks, has launched the FITI high-performance backbone network, connected 40 core nodes and test sites in 35 cities across the country, and has a large-capacity IPv6 address space and autonomous domain number.

Reporters learned that as a general test platform, FITI has extremely high requirements for bandwidth. On the one hand, it needs to provide high-speed and stable network support for various future internet technology tests. On the other hand, FITI supports no less than 4096 core network slice resources, which requires extremely sufficient bandwidth to ensure a large-scale parallel flow. Looking at the global situation, the wide-area 400G backbone network technology has just started to be commercially used on a large scale this year, and the industry generally predicts that T-bit backbone network products will appear after 2025. Compared with the 400G network, the 1.2T network has significant advantages in performance, power consumption, cost, and compatibility evolution. For example, when transferring 1PB of big data from Beijing to Guangzhou, the 100G line needs 1 day, the 400G line needs 6 hours, and the 1.2T line only needs 2 hours.

Promote the development of future network frontier research

At present, the world is facing a new round of major scientific and technological revolutions, and the internet has become a global scientific research and innovation platform. The main countries of the world are actively deploying innovative research on the future network, hoping to promote the development of frontier research by building a global future network test infrastructure. The launch of the FITI project is an action for China to actively seize this major scientific and technological opportunity and make a major layout in future internet research.

It is reported that FITI is not only mainly based on pure IPv6 technology but also supports the next-generation internet real source address verification system (SAVA). This means that FITI is a large network dedicated to exploring the key core technologies of the next-generation internet.Wu Jianping said that SAVA, based on the IPv6 protocol, was proposed in response to the global major technical challenge of the lack of credible assurance for source addresses in the open Internet architecture. SAVA supports the precise positioning of the real source address of the Internet and address traceability, breaking through the key core technology of security and credibility of the next generation Internet architecture, and has achieved significant social and economic benefits.

Reporters learned that when the FITI backbone network was launched, the highest bandwidth between core nodes was 200G. After this 1.2T Internet backbone passage was opened, the highest bandwidth between the core nodes of the FITI backbone network was increased to 1.2T. At the same time, FITI has achieved interconnection with domestic and foreign IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) / IPv6 test facilities. This means that users can access more test facilities.

Today, the global backbone network technology has fully entered the 100G era, and 400G backbone network technology has also gradually started to be deployed on a large scale, and many manufacturers and institutions have started research and pilot projects for 800G backbone network technology. The successful opening of the 1.2T Internet backbone passage by FITI not only promotes the development of global Internet technology but also shows China's strong independent innovation capability.

It is a part of the Internet and can also support experiments.

"We also often position FITI as CERNET3." Wu Jianping believes that, in a sense, CERNET, CERNET2, and FITI represented by CERNET3 symbolize the three historical stages of China's Internet research and construction. The first historical stage started in 1994 when China began to build CERNET, marking the start of China's Internet. The second historical stage started in 2004 with the opening of CERNET2, marking the entry of China's Internet into the catch-up innovation stage. The third historical stage started with the construction of CERNET3, marking the development of China's Internet technology into a new era.

"The best Internet test platform must not be a laboratory platform, but a part of the Internet, its technology and services have the opportunity to directly face users. Only by connecting with the Internet can we face the real problems on the Internet." Wang Jilong, the chief engineer of the FITI project and a tenured professor at Tsinghua University, said. On the one hand, FITI is connected to the global Internet, and the problems encountered by the Internet, FITI also has the opportunity to encounter; at the same time, FITI is also a relatively open platform, as a part of the global Internet, FITI will also link more resources in the future. On the other hand, FITI emphasizes giving users the greatest autonomy. FITI has applied for real IP addresses and real autonomous system numbers, hoping to "slice" out independent, real networks, allowing users to have complete control.

"FITI has determined an important basic concept in its design: it must become a part of the global Internet, have a real Internet environment, and be able to support experiments." Wang Jilong said.