China's future network transmits 72 TB in 1.6 hours, ending the "truck full of hard drives" era
China's Future Internet Test Infrastructure (FITI), a national‑level major science and technology project jointly developed by Tsinghua University and 40 other universities, has officially passed state acceptance and entered full operation. The platform spans 35 cities and 40 university nodes across the country, forming China's most advanced research‑grade next‑generation network.
FITI's backbone bandwidth reaches 100 Gbps, with some sections achieving 1.2 Tbps. It supports up to 4,096 parallel experiments and maintains an extremely low packet‑loss rate of just one‑millionth. The system is designed for high‑efficiency, low‑latency, and low‑jitter data transmission, enabling research and industrial applications that traditional networks cannot support.
During a demonstration at the Jiangsu Future Network Innovation Institute, 72 TB of astronomical‑observation data from the FAST radio telescope ("China Sky Eye") was transmitted to the data center at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in only 1.6 hours. Over the traditional public internet, the same dataset would require 699 days - nearly two years - to complete.
This dramatic contrast highlights why people often joke that the fastest way to move large datasets is still "putting hard drives on a truck." FITI's performance shows that this era may finally be ending.
The demonstration also compared two types of network channels: a deterministic 50 Gbps channel and a non‑deterministic channel. Under normal conditions, the deterministic channel delivered a stable 50 Gbps transfer rate, while the non‑deterministic channel reached about 42 Gbps.
When a 50 Gbps interference stream was added, the deterministic channel maintained full bandwidth without degradation. In contrast, the non‑deterministic channel collapsed to below 1 Gbps, showing how deterministic networking can guarantee performance even under heavy interference.
FITI (Future Internet Test Infrastructure) is China's first national‑level major scientific research facility dedicated to next‑generation internet technologies. Jointly developed by Tsinghua University and dozens of research institutions, FITI provides a large‑scale, high‑bandwidth, low‑latency experimental network for advanced networking research, data‑intensive science, and future communication technologies. It follows earlier national networks such as CERNET and CERNET2, representing China's latest step toward building a future‑oriented internet architecture.
