ACADEMIA

Qwest Sponsors Most Daring Networking Challenge Competition at SC06: Qwest Communications International today announced it will provide network services and sponsor the "Bandwidth Challenge" for SC06, a premier international conference of high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis at the Tampa Convention Center, Nov. 12-17. The annual SC Conference brings together a diverse community of computer and computational scientists, scientific researchers, government and academic managers to share ideas and glimpse the future of high-performance computing, networking, data management, analysis visualization, and computational modeling. The conference is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society and by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture. For SC06, Qwest is providing several 10-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) connections to the Tampa Convention Center using Qwest's state-of-the-art dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) nationwide transport network called QWave. In addition, Qwest will provide over 150 megabits per second (Mbps) of Internet service to the conference. At the conference, teams of scientists and engineers try to max out the limits in the Bandwidth Challenge. The Challenge, presented by Qwest, is a contest in which scientists and networking engineers compete to create the best and most advanced techniques for using vast amounts of data and showcasing it on advanced networks. The key is to display the data via a meaningful application. Last year's first-place winner submitted the entry "Distributed TeraByte Particle Physics Data Sample Analysis," which was measured at a peak of 131.57 Gbps of IP traffic. "SC06 highlights Qwest's leadership role in providing high-end network services to some of the top research organizations, government agencies and educational institutions in the nation," said Tom Richards, executive vice president, Qwest business markets group. "We started sponsoring this event seven years ago, and because we have one of the most advanced nationwide telecommunications networks, we're glad to be asked to come back year after year."