The pursuit of high-performance data transfer often focuses on raw network bandwidth, and international links of 100 Gbps or higher are frequently considered the primary enabler. While necessary, this network-centric view is incomplete, equating provisioned link speeds with practical, sustainable data movement capabilities across the entire edge-to-core spectrum. This paper investigates six common paradigms, from the often-cited constraints of network latency and TCP congestion control algorithms to host-side factors such as CPU performance and virtualization that critically impact data movement workflows. We validated our findings using a latency-emulation-capable testbed for high-speed WAN performance prediction and through extensive production measurements from resource-constrained edge environments to a 100 Gbps operational link connecting Switzerland and California, U.S. These results show that the principal bottlenecks often reside outside the network core, and that a holistic hardware-software co-design ensures consistent performance, whether moving data at 1 Gbps or 100 Gbps and faster. This approach effectively closes the fidelity gap between benchmark results and diverse and complex production environments.

翻译：高性能数据传输的追求往往聚焦于原始网络带宽，100 Gbps或更高的国际链路常被视为主要推动因素。尽管必要，这种以网络为中心的观点并不完整，它将配置的链路速度等同于实际可持续的、跨越整个边缘到核心范围的数据移动能力。本文研究了六种常见范式，从常被提及的网络延迟和TCP拥塞控制算法约束，到主机端因素（如CPU性能和虚拟化）对数据移动工作流的关键影响。我们通过支持延迟仿真的高速广域网性能预测测试平台，以及从资源受限的边缘环境到连接瑞士与美国加利福尼亚州的100 Gbps运营链路的广泛生产测量，验证了我们的发现。结果表明，主要瓶颈通常位于网络核心之外，而硬件-软件协同设计的整体方法确保了性能的一致性，无论是在1 Gbps还是100 Gbps及更高速率下移动数据。这一方法有效缩小了基准测试结果与多样复杂生产环境之间的保真度差距。