Windows 2000 Sets New Internet Performance Record

REDMOND, Wash., March 31, 2000 — A team that included University of Washington, Microsoft Corp., Qwest Communications International Inc. and Information Sciences Institute of University of Southern California shattered the land-speed record for transcontinental Internet traffic. The group won a contest sponsored by the Internet2 Community. The winning entry results demonstrate that an off-the-shelf system consisting of Dell and Compaq workstations running the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system was able to sustain a data throughput rate of 831 Mbps (out of a physical maximum of 1000 Mbps) over a distance of 5,626 kilometers. See http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2000/mar00/performancepr-b.asp for details. To put the results into context, moving data at those rates would allow a user to download all the music on a single CD (640 MB) from one side of the United States to the other in about six seconds. The same transmission on a typical modem found in desktop systems today would take about a day.

“The limits on today’s Internet are no longer determined by raw bandwidth, but rather by how well the different network components work together,”
said Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Division at Microsoft.
“The Internet2 Land Speed Record competition has helped us enable Windows 2000 to work well with the network components of the Internet today and tomorrow to deliver unprecedented speed and performance for customers out of the box.”

“This is an amazing accomplishment,”
said Ed Lazowska of the University of Washington.
“The Internet is rapidly becoming a part of our everyday lives. As richer services such as CD-quality sound, video teleconferencing, and HDTV-quality video become more widely used over the Internet, users will need a platform capable of sustaining high network throughput over long distances. Microsoft, through Windows 2000, puts this amazing capability in the hands of hundreds of millions of consumers.”

About the Contest

The Internet2 Community, which sponsored the contest, is a consortium of more than 170 universities working in partnership with industry and government leaders to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet. The contest was established to recognize and publicize outstanding performance achievements in the area of high-performance, high-speed networks. Entries were judged on a combination of the amount of bandwidth they used and the distance they covered end to end, using the standard Internet (TCP/IP) protocols. The Internet2 Land Speed Awards will be presented every six months at the Internet2 member meetings, next scheduled for fall 2000 in Atlanta.

Windows 2000 Submission Details

Using Windows 2000 Professional, the Microsoft team set up a test that transferred 8.4 GB of data from one desktop computer in Redmond to a second desktop computer in Arlington, Va. – a distance of 5,626 kilometers. The 8.4 GB of data was transferred in 82 seconds, resulting in a transfer rate of 831 Mbps per second. It would have taken 13 hours to transfer the same 8.4 GB of data over a 1.5Mbps DSL connection, and 15 days to transfer it over a standard 56Kbps modem.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.

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