China innovates network technology, achieving efficient data transmission

NANJING -- Data that would take 699 days to transmit over the traditional Internet was transferred in just 1.6 hours on a testbed for China's future networks.

China's first national science and technology infrastructure in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector -- China Environment for Network Innovation (CENI) -- recently passed national acceptance in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, and has been officially commissioned.

CENI is an open, user-friendly, and sustainable large-scale universal test infrastructure that provides a simple, efficient, and low-cost test and verification environment for researching innovative architectures of future networks.

"CENI's passage of national acceptance marks China's entry into the world's advanced echelon in the capabilities of network technology innovation, test verification, and service application, enabling it to deliver higher-quality services for all industries to embrace AI," said Liu Yunjie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

In the facility experiment, 72 TB of data generated by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in Southwest China's Guizhou province arrived at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Central China's Hubei province in just 1.6 hours.

"The FAST generates around 100 TB of data daily. The commissioning of CENI will significantly enhance data transmission efficiency and quality," said Liu.

Currently, the CENI boasts large-scale, programmable, virtualized, and open-sharing features.

Liu noted that the team has pioneered a service-customized network architecture internationally, developed the world's first distributed large-network OS, and built the world's first wide-area deterministic network. It has also advanced key optoelectronic integration technologies, playing a pivotal role in the "East Data, West Computing" initiative.

During construction, the team led or participated in the formulation of 206 international and domestic standards. It has secured 221 authorized invention patents and 139 software copyrights, with multiple achievements winning national-level scientific and technological awards.

After over a decade of construction, CENI now spans 40 cities nationwide, boasting a total optical transmission length of over 55,000 kilometers. Operating full-time, it can support 128 heterogeneous networks and 4,096 parallel heterogeneous service tests, seamlessly interconnect with the existing Internet and global test facilities, and has the capabilities for high-throughput, high-reliability and deterministic transmission.

CENI will allow research institutions and enterprises to test various new technologies on it in the future, and it has supported the development of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) and 6G technologies, according to Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"Training a large model with 100-billion-level parameters across domains requires over 500,000 rounds of iterative development, with CENI, each training round takes only about 16 seconds," Liu stated, adding that empowering large model training with CENI can save significant time and economic costs.

Going forward, CENI will deliver open testbed support to key industries, including manufacturing, energy and power, education and healthcare, and the low-altitude economy, thereby accelerating the Digital China Initiative.