Imagine packing up a priceless work of art and sending it to a gallery on the other side of the world. Imagine doing that with no paperwork for the courier company. Now imagine that instead of art this is\u202fdata about subatomic particles, the molecular structures of\u202fpotentially toxic street drugs, global climate models or the far reaches of the universe.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
As detectors and sensors and instruments of all kinds become increasingly sensitive, research generates orders of magnitude\u00a0more data\u202fthan ever.\u202fScientists have developed methods and infrastructure to transfer those vast quantities of data\u202fmore\u202fquickly, says Randall Sobie,\u202fresearch scientist at the Institute of Particle Physics, of which the University of Victoria (UVic) is a key member. Now,\u202fUVic\u00a0researchers have labelled the data and\u2014critically\u2014proved that the labels did not slow down the\u202fprocess.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Game-changing code\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tristan Sullivan, a high-energy physicist at UVic,\u202fdeveloped\u202fthe\u202fopen-source\u202fcode\u202fthat puts markers on the data.\u202f\u202fThen\u202fhe\u202fused a technique known as\u202fSciTags\u202fto\u202fidentify\u202fwho owns the data and its purpose. The\u202finformation could be used to distinguish real data from simulated data, or network tests from data transfers, for example.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
The proof came in November 2025 when scientists at UVic sent labelled data at a rate of 1.15 terabits per second to the International\u202fSuperComputing\u202fConference in St. Louis, Missouri.\u202fThat\u2019s\u202flike\u202fstreaming more than 66,000 high-definition movies at once.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
This could be a game changer for individual\u202fresearch\u202fprojects as well as networks like BCNET, which provides high-speed regional connectivity to the research community, and CANARIE, the national ultra-high-speed network that connects researchers in Canada to networks around the globe.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
The packet marking being able to keep up with the data moving at 1.15\u00a0terabits\u00a0per second was an important part of the demonstration.\u00a0It opens the door to real-time visibility,\u00a0measurement\u00a0and optimization of large-scale scientific data movement.\u201d\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2014Tristan Sullivan,\u00a0high-energy physicist at the Victoria Subatomic Physics & Accelerator Research Centre<\/p>\n
That matters to individual researchers and projects, and to partners.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Networks and partnerships\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have\u00a0quality of\u00a0service agreements with international projects like those at CERN\u202f(the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland)\u202fand the Square Kilometre Array\u202fof radio telescopes,\u201d\u202fexplains\u00a0Ryan Enge, director of\u00a0research\u00a0computing\u00a0services\u00a0at UVic. \u201cIf we guarantee some minimum bandwidth for those projects, packet marking will let us monitor it and make sure each partner is receiving its share.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sullivan,\u202fSobie\u202fand Enge\u202fall emphasize the\u202fvital\u202frole of\u202fthe networks that carry the data across countries, over borders and beneath oceans, and\u202findustry partners\u202fsuch as Dell,\u202fNVIDIA\u202fand Lenovo, who supply hardware that makes\u202fthe volume and speed possible.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe markers,\u201d Sobie\u202fsays, \u201ccan help us manage our data, monitor it and make better use of networks and storage.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
This new proof that labels\u202fwon\u2019t\u202fslow the\u202fprocess\u202fshifts research into a new gear. When scientists\u202freceive galactic amounts of\u202fdata,\u202fthey\u2019ll\u202fknow whose it is, why it was collected and what might be done with it. And\u202fthey\u2019ll\u202fknow it in less than the time it takes to\u202fsay\u202f\u201cthe art of science.\u201d\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine packing up a priceless work of art and sending it to a gallery on the other side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,153651,140,77,25659,66,187275],"class_list":{"0":"post-456916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-faculty-staff","11":"tag-innovation","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-partnerships","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-victoria-subatomic-physics-and-accelerator-research-centre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}