Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of High Energy Physics exchanged huge scientific data with their Italian counterparts via the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (Gloriad).

The huge data, collected at the Yangbajing Observatory for space radials, could not be transmitted through the prevailing Internet.

The Hong Kong Open Exchange Portal (HKOEP) witnessed such kind of huge data transmission in the past year.

Chen Wei, a senior engineer at the CAS Computer Network Information Center who oversees construction of the HKOEP, said Monday that the portal has already been linked with research networks in Japan, Taiwan and the Republic of Korea. It is scheduled to connect other nets throughout the world.

In addition to three Gloriad founders, China, the United States and Russia, the HKOEP program was joined by the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands and Canada in September.

Gloriad, expected to be an important platform for research for the Next Generation Internet (NGI), is proposed as a 10-gigabit-per-second optical network around the Northern Hemisphere. The ring begins in Chicago at the Starlight facility, funded by the US National Science Foundation, crosses the Atlantic Ocean to the Netherlight facility in Amsterdam, continues to Moscow and the Russian science city of Novosibirsk, goes on to Beijing and Hong Kong, and then crosses the Pacific Ocean to complete the circuit in Chicago.

Chen estimated that basic research in many areas would benefit from Gloriad, such as natural disaster forecasts, human genome mapping, exploration of outer space, earthquake monitoring, and high-energy physics.

Gloriad was developed from a US-Russian program of NaukaNet, which provides Russian scientists access to the NGI in the United States. In reciprocity, American researchers could also be linked to high performance Internet service in Russia.

The CAS, China's top scientific research institution, also views Gloriad as a vital step toward a Chinese NGI, coded E-Science project, which is scheduled in 2006.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2005)