Tracking the lightTranscontinental transmission of high definition film inaugurates 10-gigabyte optic fiber for academic InternetMarcos de OliveiraPrint edition 163 - August 2009

The lights of the cinema and the lights of

photonics met at the simultaneous viewing of

a digital film transmitted in super high

definition, in real time, from São Paulo to San

Diego, California, in the United States, and to

Yokohama, in Japan. The experiment

highlighted the inauguration of an optic fiber

line with Internet transmission capacity of 10

gigabytes per second/Gbps connected to

countries abroad; this line will cater to Sâo

Paulo´s academic community. The event took

place during the 10º Festival Internacional de

Linguagem Eletrônica/File, Electronic

Language Festival, held on July 30 and 31 at

the theater located on the premises of Sesi, in

the city of São Paulo. The film Enquanto a

noite não chega, directed by Beto Souza, is

the first long-feature film to be produced in

Brazil in 4K, a video technology equivalent to

four times the resolution of high-definition

digital TV used around the world or to 24

times the resolution of traditional commercial

TV. “The 4K technology does not make us

miss the standard long-feature film,” says

professor Jane de Almeida, from the post-

graduate program in Education, Art and

History of Culture at Universidade

Presbiteriana Mackenzie university, who

coordinated the event together with professor

Eunézio Antônio de Souza, from the Photonics

Lab of the same university. The experiment,

which had never been performed in the

Southern Hemisphere, also included a

conference in real time with screen projection

in the theater. The conference included

participation by Brazilian researchers from

Mackenzie and researchers from abroad,

from the Center for Research in Computing

and the Arts/CRCA and the California

Institute for Telecommunications and

Information Technology/Calit2 at the

University of California in San Diego/UCSD,

and the Research Institute in Digital Media

and Content/DMC at Tokyo´s Keio

University. 

During the transmission, the researchers´

film and images were transformed into

photons by lasers and delivered by optic

fibers from the theater in São Paulo to the

universities abroad, without going through

any copper wire or the like. Incoming and

outgoing 1.5 Gbps connections were made at

each point, totaling 3 Gbps. “We worked at

the cutting edge of optic and cinema

technology,” says professor Souza, also

known as Thoroh in the academic community.

Each frame of the film, in digital 4K file,

equivalent to one frame of photographic film

in traditional film, contains 8 million pixels

(4.096 x 2.160 pixels) in comparison to the

existing 2 million pixels in the best current

television technology (1.920 x 1.080), even

though commercial or demo TV 4K screens

still do not exist. Digital film needs

30 frames per second. Such a massive size of

data could only go through a connection with

a transmission band equivalent to or much

higher than the current commercial

standards. “To transmit the film, we used a

3,5 Gbps band for the transmission,

equivalent to the capacity of 3,500 homes

connected to the Internet at 1 megabyte per

second (Mbps),” says professor Thoroh. His

lab is part of the KyaTera network, a

structure of optic fiber cables that

interconnects research centers, in 20 Gbps, in

the cities of São Paulo, Campinas and São

Carlos, São Paulo State. This is part of the

Programa Tecnologia da Informação no

Desenvolvimento da Internet Avançada/Tidia,

Advanced Internet Program headed by

FAPESP. “The 4K event, held in July, was an

exercise for the KyaTera network with the

objective of connecting definitively to an

international link this year.”

Expanded KyaTera – So far, this network

has been used by researchers from São Paulo

universities in experiments in the fields of

photonics, network protocols and equipment

use applications requiring broadband for

transmission (see Pesquisa Fapesp nr. 139).

“Now that the researchers from the KyaTera

network are connected to the academic

network, called internet 2 [internet 1 is the

commercial one], they will be able to

establish speedy connections with other

researchers around the world. This is already

possible, as attested to by the 4K

transmission, but requires the intervention of

many people to achieve routing along the

way. The idea is that they will be able to do

this automatically in the future because the

researchers from KyaTera will probably be

the main users of this 10 Gbpslink,” says

professor Hugo Fragnito, from the State

University of Campinas/Unicamp and

coordinator of the KyaTera project. 

The contracting and management of

connections with foreign countries was done

by the Academic Network at São Paulo/Ansp,

which is financed by FAPESP. The Ansp also

provides internet services to universities and

research centers in São Paulo. The 10 Gbps

connection is an extended agreement

between Ansp and the US´s National Science

Foundation/NSF. In 2005, these two entities

created the Western Hemisphere Research

and Education Networks-Links

Interconnecting Latin America/Whren-Lila to

provide optic fiber connections between São

Paulo and Miami, initially at 2,5 Gbps. The

new laser-illuminated optic fibers channel

was leased from Latin American Nautilus, the

company that owns cables with several fibers

installed along the Brazilian coast and which

extends from the Caribbean and Central

America to Miami. From Miami, the

transmission travels equally as quickly across

the United States or to Europe or Asia. “The

10 Gbps connection will cost US$ 3 million a

year, US$ 1,4 million of which will be

provided by the NSF and the remaining

amount by FAPESP,” says professor Luís

Fernandez Lopez, coordinator of the Ansp

network and of Tidia.

The conventional or special Internet

transmissions, as was the case in the film and

videoconference held in July, leave Brazil

through an optic fiber cable located in the

town of Praia Grande, on the southern coast

of São Paulo State and travel under the sea to

Miami. In Florida, the cable is connected to

the International Exchange Point for

Research and Education Networking in

Miami/ Ampath, which works as a traffic

exchange point, also referred to as Network

Access Point/NAP, between the US´s and

international academic and educational

networks that are also connected to the

commercial Internet. The traffic exchange

points consist of one or more pieces of

equipment, called routers, where the Internet

providers connect, under the form of bilateral

agreements, so that the e-mails being

exchanged – in this case, for example,

between a researcher from Mackenzie and

another from the University of California - can

be delivered. From this traffic exchange point

in Miami, the Ansp has agreements with other

networks connected to the Ampath, which, as

Internet 2, provides access to the rest of the

world. The Internet 2 is a high speed internet

network comprised of more than 200

universities, 70 companies, 45 US

Government agencies and 50 international

organizations.

The agreements on traffic exchange based in

Miami also includes access to the Atlantic

Wave, maintained by research and

educational entities in the US´s southeast.

This network provides access in 40 Gbps to

European and federal networks in the United

States; National Lambda Rail, a US network

comprised of universities and technology

companies, that provides the infra structure

for research and experiments; Florida

Lambda Rail, a network of State of Florida

institutions and Pacific Wave, which makes

connections with Asian and Oceania networks

in 10 Gbps. Another agreement is the one

between the Corporation for Education

Network Initiatives in California/ Cenic

network, maintained by research institutes

from the State of California. 

Thanks to 10 Gbps transmission, the Ansp has

begun to actually participate in the Global

Lambda Integrated Facility/Glif), a virtual,

global organization that promotes the

integration of networks or lambdas (the

various wave lengths emitted by lasers, also

referred to as colors), to support scientific

experiments. In addition, the organization

promotes the exchange of experiences among

network engineers that work in this field.

“Glif is like a club or a consortium, where

members do not have to pay a membership

fee to exchange information among the

academic networks that work in 10 Gbps,”

says Lopez. The entity´s members include the

European Center for Nuclear Research/Cern,

Internet2, Fermilab, the UK´s Janet academic

network, and the Trans-European Research

and Networking Association/ Terena. In

Brazil, the Rede Nacional de Ensino e

Pesquisa/ RNP network, linked to the Ministry

of Science and Technology, provides the

structure for the research networks in Brasil

and acts as an Internet provider, out of the

scope of the Ansp, for universities and other

research and educational institutes in the

country. The RNP, which also participated in

the preparations for the transmission of the

4K technology, expects an additional

connection of 10 Gbps to Miami, through an

underwater optic fiber cable owned by the

Global Crossing company and connected in

the city of Rio de Janeiro. Thus, the Brazilian

academic network will have a shared 20 Gbps

Internet connection with countries abroad. 

But before the academic network´s Internet

connection leaves through Santos to arrive in

Miami and all the other networks around the

world, it goes through a compulsory passage

by the traffic exchange point in São Paulo,

considered by the Glif, as being one of the 18

traffic points in the world´s academic

networks. Still referred to as NAP do Brasil,

this point is used for traffic exchange. It is

managed by the Terremark company, the

same company that manages Miami´s NAP.

The São Paulo traffic exchange point has been

installed in the city since 2004 in the

municipality of Barueri, in São Paulo City´s

Metropolitan Region. This traffic exchange

point is the result of an agreement between

FAPESP – which operated the academic and

commercial traffic exchange point from 1998

to 2004 at its head office – and the US

company.

Linked to the world – To transmit the film

and the conference, it was necessary to

reserve traffic connections along the Internet

lines in the United States. A 10Gbps

connection was reserved between Miami and

Los Angeles, California, operated by C Wave,

an experimental network run by the Cisco

company, and part of the National Lambda

Rail. A line owned by Cenic was used from

Los Angeles to San Diego. From San Diego,

the signal was transported to Tokyo by a

cable that crosses under the Pacific Ocean;

this cable is operated by the Japanese

network Gigabit II. Part of the network also

had to be prepared and reserved on the São

Paulo side. This was the 10 Gbps line between

the traffic exchange point in Barueri and USP.

A special fiber network owned by telephony

operator Telefônica was used by Mackenzie.

Thanks to an agreement entered into in 2007

and renewed this year, this line was used by

the Tidia network. “We used a disconnected,

useless fiber, which means that the laser was

not working there,” says professor Thoroh.

Connecting the laser in the optic fiber and

passing the 10 Gbps was possible thanks to

the loan of optic transmission equipment

owned by the University of São Paulo and the

Foundry company, and lasers and amplifiers

owned by the Padtec company, from

Campinas, State of São Paulo. Another

agreement with Telefônica for the event

provided a connection from Mackenzie

University´s Photonics Lab with the building

owned by the Federação das Indústrias do

Estado de São Paulo/ Fiesp (São Paulo

Federation of Industries), where the theater

is located. This connection was supplied

through a high-speed dedicated optic fiber. 

This kind of international technical venture

had only been held between the United

States, Europe and Japan. Professor Jane had

the idea in Brazil. “At the File 2008, together

with researchers from UCSD, we ran some

films in 4K and the next step would be to

transmit the films,” says Jane. “So this year I

contacted professor Thoroh, as I had become

acquainted with his work on the KyaTera

network, to ask about the possibility of

transmitting the film to the United States. He

bought my idea.” The two of them went

chasing after the equipment, the film and the

transmission. “ It was hard work,” says

Thoroh. The projector and the cameras, which

are still sold upon specific order, were lent by

Sony. 

To send the film, the researchers from UCSD

had to bring two Zaxel Providers with 4

terabytes (TB) memory each. The film has

approximately 5 TB, equivalent to one

thousand standard DVD disks of 4,7

gigabytes. The 70-minute film is based on the

novel Enquanto a noite não chega, by Rio

Grande do Sul writer Josué Guimarães (1921-

1986). The story is about an elderly couple,

Dom Eleutério and Dona Conceição, who live

in an abandoned town while they wait for

death to come and get them. The gravedigger

is the only other person living in that town

and he is merely waiting to bury the old

couple and go away to another town. But the

gravedigger dies before the old couple. “Beto

Souza made a film with extensive landscapes

and rural colors. There is a scene where the

old couple nostalgically tries to watch a film

whose images have deteriorated,” Jane

describes. “In the context of our transmission,

this theme evokes an immediate connection

with the end of traditional film – which dies

too late. Current opinion is that Hollywood is

taking too long to substitute film,” she says.

“The art is changing because of the new

technologies. After 1915, traditional movies

on film became established, but the 4K

technology can change the movie industry.”