 Nuclear Research (CERN), and the organizations DataTAG, StarLight, TeraGrid, Cisco, and Level(3) The FAST protocol was developed in Caltech's Networking Lab, led by Steven Low, asso- ciate professor of computer science and electrical engineering. It is based on theoretical work done in collaboration with John Doyle, a professor of control and dynamical systems, electrical engineering, and bioengineering at Caltech, and Fernando Paganini, associate professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. It builds on work from a growing community of theoreticians inter- ested in building a theoretical foundation of the Internet, an effort led by Caltech. Harvey Newman, a professor of physics at Caltech, says the fast protocol "represents a milestone for science, for grid systems, and for the Internet." "Rapid and reliable data transport, at speeds of 1 to 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps in the future, is a key enabler of the global collaborations in physics and other fields," Newman says. "The ability to extract, transport, analyze, and share many Terabyte-scale data collections is at the heart of the process of search and discovery for new scientific knowledge. The FAST results show that the high degree of transparency and performance of networks, assumed implicitly by Grid systems, can be achieved in practice. In a broader context, the fact that 10 Gbps wavelengths can be used efficiently to transport data at maximum speed end to end will transform the future concepts of the Internet." Les Cottrell of SLAC, added that progress in speeding up data transfers over long distance are critical to progress in various scientific endeavors. "These include sciences such as high-energy physics and nuclear physics, astronomy, global weather predictions, biology, seismology, and fusion; and industries such as aerospace, medicine, and media distribution. Today, these activities often are forced to share their data using literally truck or plane loads of data," Cottrell says. "Utilizing the network can dramatically reduce the delays and automate to