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New Internet2 Land Speed Record

SquadBoy writes "An international team set a new record for Internet performance by transferring the equivalent of an entire compact disc's contents across more than 7608 miles (12,272 km) of network in 13 seconds. The rate of 401 megabits per second achieved in transferring 625 megabytes of data from Fairbanks, Alaska to Amsterdam in the Netherlands is over 8000 times greater than the fastest dial-up modem."

326 comments

  1. Just in time for ... by red5 · · Score: 1

    Just in time for Doom 3 :)

    --
    I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
    1. Re:Just in time for ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, first ISOs will not be available until 2 weeks before the official release date. Save your monthly fee until then, you'll need the money for a new graphics card.

    2. Re:Just in time for ... by Bob+McCown · · Score: 0, Troll

      No man, the pr0n, think of the pr0n!

  2. that's fast by Kargan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I'm not mistaken, that's approximately as fast as a 7200rpm ATA/66 drive can transfer data, say, to another partition on the same drive, or what have you.

    --
    Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
    1. Re:that's fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An 7200rpm ATA/66 drive would never get 400Mbit/s. It might get that during a huge sequential read from the outer tracks. Definitely not copying a file to itself.

    2. Re:that's fast by linuxator · · Score: 1

      7200rpm ATA100 drive may get that kind of speeds only from cache, not from disk.. well.. and you just don't have 650MB cache on your el cheapo IDE drive :)

      --
      * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    3. Re:that's fast by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 1

      I remember a few late-nite covert ops missions that involved plugging my laptop into an unnamed companies gateway router. I seem to remember downloading 3 mandrake disks in under an hour. There was so much data passing, the mouse actually stopped responding for large periods of time.

      --
      I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
    4. Re:that's fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      400 mbits=50 mbytes. iirc fastest sequential read speed i've seen is 48 megabytes/s from outer tracks so it's not that off.

    5. Re:that's fast by VP · · Score: 1

      ~700 MBytes of data in 13 seconds? That is much faster than a hard drive's transfer ability (at least a 7200 rpm ATA/66 drive)...

    6. Re:that's fast by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      whoa! that's about the speed I get over GigE from my Mac to the fileserver's RAID next door! Holy fuck! Alaska!!

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    7. Re:that's fast by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 4, Informative

      err... no it isn't. My little G4's internal SCSI array reads at sustd/peak 78/286 writes at 76/92. That's MB/sec so we're talking IRO R >600/>2200 W >600/>700. And this little array's nothing special, just a pair of Fujitsu MAJ's at 10K rpm with 4MB cache each on an ATTO UL3D twin channel host controller. Cost around a grand to install is all - there are WAY faster drives than those available now - awesome 15k rpm beasts than can top 60MB/sec sustained...

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    8. Re:that's fast by VP · · Score: 1

      My little G4's internal SCSI array reads at sustd/peak 78/286 writes at 76/92.

      SCSI arrays are a different beast from a 7200/66 ATA drive...

    9. Re:that's fast by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      I've seen 35MB/sec from the little Maxtor Diamondmax boot drive in there too - that's a 60Gb 7200rpm ATA/100 disk. Not far off, and that ain't the fastest ATA either. Go check out StorageReview.com for some proper storage performance analysis.

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    10. Re:that's fast by linzeal · · Score: 1

      Name a harddrive that has 650 megs of cache, on the actual hard drive (raid does not count).

    11. Re:that's fast by VP · · Score: 1

      35MB/sec for an ATA/100 disk - this gives us less than 24MB/sec for an ATA/66 disk.

      700 / 24 gives about 30 seconds (and that would be read speed). Therefore the original poster was wrong - 700+ MB for 13 seconds is much faster than an ATA/66 disk.

    12. Re:that's fast by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      err... nope. The 100 and the 66 refer to the peak bandwidth of the interface in MB/sec. My 7200RPM ATA100 drive is on an ATA66 controller and gives 64MB/sec peak reads out of drive cache and 35MB/sec sustained (according to my ATTO benchmarking tool, anyway) - not much faster than ATA33, but the cache burst IS. And that's the reason why that WD ATA133 drive with 8MB cache scores so great, it can burst up to 8MB at up to 133MB/sec even though it can probably only manage a similar sustained rate to my Diamondmax.

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    13. Re:that's fast by Drakantus · · Score: 2

      that's the reason why that WD ATA133 drive with 8MB cache scores so great, it can burst up to 8MB at up to 133MB/sec


      Not quite. The only ATA/133 drives in existance are made by Maxtor. Those 8MB cache Western Digital drives are built with ATA/100 interfaces. Not that it matters to any measurable degree, the Maxtors don't actually benchmark any better when run off of an ATA/133 controller vs an ATA/100.


      See Storage Review for more information.

      --
      I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
    14. Re:that's fast by Kargan · · Score: 1

      I remember reading somewhere (it was a while ago, I don't have a link) that the most you'd get out of your average ATA/33 drive was about 20MB/s, an ATA/66 drive was 40-50MB/s, and ATA/100 was 60-80MB/s, so that's what I was basing my post on.

      I highly doubt the people involved in this test used anything less than SCSI U160...

      --
      Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
    15. Re:that's fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hrm. now are you talking about a winblows transfer or something useful like linux? because with windows, the fastest i've ever FTPed is like at 5megs/sec. With linux however, the max speed is very close to the theoretical max of the media. (9 and a half megs a second usually. sometimes rarely 11megs/sec.) keep in mind this is the same machine. hrm. now tell me which OS is better. muahahah. (btw, the 5megs/sec is from win2000 pro. I tried nt4.0 and i only got 6megs/sec instead. wow. so much "Faster". lol)

    16. Re:that's fast by BitHive · · Score: 0

      I find it much more convenient to download Mandrake from the conventional mirrors.

    17. Re:that's fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hrrrm, guess you were using the gigabit ethernet card that comes standard with Dell laptops eh.

    18. Re:that's fast by SocietyoftheFist · · Score: 1

      It's funny that this thread has started. Today I transferred 240 megs from one partition to another on a 7200 UDMA/66 drive, took approximately 15 seconds.

  3. porn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    get your porn here, red hot, barely legal, hundreds of megs!

  4. Internet2 by linuxator · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Take a notice, that Internet2 project is right now only for universities and big companys... And right now - for testing pourpourses only...

    (sorry for my bad english)

    --
    * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    1. Re:Internet2 by brsmith4 · · Score: 1

      Actually, its not big companies. I think its just govt. and universities. Well, with the exception of maybe cisco or M$. Ah well. My university is on the internet2, however we really can't utilize it. Does anyone know if it's on IPv6 or what?

    2. Re:Internet2 by linuxator · · Score: 1

      as i remember it is natively on IPv6...

      --
      * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    3. Re:Internet2 by dknj · · Score: 1

      Ahh how good it feels to work for a dot edu =) Now how long until the RIAA and MPAA sue the creators and/or try to find a patent infringement?

      -dk

    4. Re:Internet2 by FyRE666 · · Score: 4, Funny


      Take a notice, that Internet2 project is right now only for universities and big companys... And right now - for testing pourpourses only...

      Which examination are the pourpourses taking?

      Good luck to all the pourpourses out there!!

    5. Re:Internet2 by linuxator · · Score: 1

      Like i didn't say sorry for my bad english? Dammit i need to get some sleep...

      --
      * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    6. Re:Internet2 by Pinehill.net · · Score: 1

      IPV6 and Internet2 are orthogonal. Internet2 is a high-speed network interconnecting mostly educational intitutions. I believe the general idea is this: "10 years ago we gave a bunch of colleged kids arapnet, and we got the web. Let's give them next-generation networks and let them do the R&D to develop next-gen apps."

      I2 is generally served by the same campus routers as erverything else. if the best path from you to your destination is over I2 your packets will get routed that wat. I can get 5 Megabit per second transfers between my I2 connected site and the public FTP server at the U of Michigan, over I2 links.

    7. Re:Internet2 by TampaTim · · Score: 1
      It's used for running tests on poupourses you idiot! Everyone knows that pourpourses cant take tests!

    8. Re:Internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually ESL people tend to screw up the grammer and not the spelling. This is probably someone who speaks english as their first language, but does not do it very well.

    9. Re:Internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, he apologized for the bad english. And anyways, it's "Porpoises"

    10. Re:Internet2 by AndrewRUK · · Score: 1

      "10 years ago we gave a bunch of colleged kids arapnet, and we got the web."
      I think you'll find the web started life at CERN.
      Now, maybe I'm being pedantic, but I don't think they would apreciate being called "a bunch of colleged kids."

    11. Re:Internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As are you.

      It's grammar, dumbfuck!

    12. Re:Internet2 by Pinehill.net · · Score: 1

      You are being pedantic :), so I will join you.
      The http started life at CERN but http requires tcp for reliable transport which requires ip for routing which requires layer-2 technologies ilke ethernet and token ring...

      All of these things, more or less, came out of an environment of learning and experimentation that I sweeplingly generalized to 'A bunch of college kids'. It may not be accurate, but I think it accurately conveys what the general sentiment of I2 is.

    13. Re:Internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you are? Please.. maybe YOU should lay off.

      English was not my first language, but it took years of ridicule to get me to straighten out. What if we attempted to post in their native language. Same shit.

      So.. a big FUCK YOU is in order. If they continue to fuck up the English language and no one is there to correct his ass, then they'll never learn. And there's no faster way to learn than making fun.

    14. Re:Internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ok stop slapping each around. this went from a post about the internet2 to this? i wonder if the human race is going to be able to survive by the time it's even implemented for us to enjoy...

  5. In other news... by dada21 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The RIAA and MPAA have both come out proclaiming Hayes' new 4800 baud modem with MNP5 as the best connection system possible, and are subsidizing the conversion from broadband to these hardware devices with a $50 rebate until the end of the year.

  6. 5 feet away by mclaren_1010 · · Score: 0

    i cant even do that in my office network! our computers are 5 feet away from each other...

  7. It has to be said... by bravehamster · · Score: 5, Funny
    747 chock full o' DVD's can beat that any day of the week. That includes a 4 hour layover in Osaka.

    --
    ---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
    1. Re:It has to be said... by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Andrew Tannenbaum put it best with, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

    2. Re:It has to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interstingly enough, that is about how many CD's came with my last copy of MS Office!

    3. Re:It has to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It says "Land Speed Record" in the headline for a reason, you know...

    4. Re:It has to be said... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2

      A 100 box car freight train full of DVDs then. It might have a latency of five days, but the bandwidth would be -killer-. :)

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    5. Re:It has to be said... by RetroGeek · · Score: 1

      747 chock full o' DVD's can beat that any day of the week.

      Not really. You still need to burn the DVD's from the source location onto the DVD's, then at the destination read them onto the local drive. That has to take time.

      The WAN xfer goes right from drive to drive.

      --

      - - - - - - - - - - -
      I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
    6. Re:It has to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot the DVD creation time and the DVD read time. If it is one computer to one computer then the DVD's have to be burned one by one and then hand inserted into the other computer one by one. No so fast suddenly.

    7. Re:It has to be said... by Velox_SwiftFox · · Score: 2

      This has to be the first time any land speed record has been set between Fairbanks and Amsterdam, then. Without the contestants getting wet.

    8. Re:It has to be said... by MindStalker · · Score: 2

      Yes, and it must be repeated again, this tranfer rate is faster than your average harddrive. So while you may be able to send more data via your boxcar, you must also include the time it takes to copy it to the DVDs and then from the DVDs. Youd loose.

    9. Re:It has to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes we've all heard that before. What the hell am I supposed to do, ph34r it?

    10. Re:It has to be said... by big_hairy_mama · · Score: 2

      Except no drive costing less than a 747 can sustain that kind of data...

    11. Re:It has to be said... by AaronStJ · · Score: 3, Informative
      Andrew Tannenbaum put it best with, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
      This math is not done by me, but by Bonboard on Everything2 (search "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes"):
      13 Petabytes per second.

      For comparison purposes, this is equivalent to about 650 strands of perfectly saturated, single-mode fiber optic cable.

      This figure will, of course, vary depending on a number of factors. In order to compensate for your own rate of travel and storage media, simply fill in the blanks below to get your tally! It's fun for kids of all ages!
      BW = (( WV / (TW * TL * TH ) ) * TC * WS / WL) , where

      BW = bandwidth in bytes / second
      WV = the volume of your station wagon, in cubic meters
      TW = the width of each individual quarter-inch tape, in meters
      TL = the length of each individual quarter-inch tape, in meters
      TH = the height of each individual quarter-inch tape, in meters
      TC = the capacity of each individual quarter-inch tape, in bytes
      WS = the speed of your station wagon, in meters/sec
      WL = the length of your station wagon, in meters

      This figure assumes average instantaneous bandwidth down the length of the wagon; in reality, I would assume that the bulk of the data transfer would occur in the region nearest the trunk.
      To get my figure, simply plug in: WV = 2.72, TW = 0.054, TL = 0.073, TH = 0.0105, TC = 35.0 * 10 ^ 9, WS = 26.8, WL = 4.75. These numbers are meant to describe a stuffed 2001 Subaru Outback doing 60MPH using 35GiB tapes of this form factor.
      --
      Stupid like a fox!
    12. Re:It has to be said... by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, but GODDAMN at the FUCKIN' LAG

      --
      I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
    13. Re:It has to be said... by InfinityEdge · · Score: 1

      Except no drive costing less than a 747 can sustain that kind of data...

      That's what raid 0 is for. Mmmmmm striping across a whole rack of disks. Sucks if one eats shit though. Maybe you could pull acceptable performance from raid 5, or software raid 0 of a bunch of raid 5 3U rackmounts similar to what Apple is coming out with.

    14. Re:It has to be said... by EvilGwyn · · Score: 2

      You'd have to copy the data from the network connection to your harddrive as well.

      --
      Phear my l33t homepage.
    15. Re:It has to be said... by ragnarok · · Score: 2, Funny

      Now if you used a WRX instead of that Outback, you should be able to substantially reduce your latency :)

      --
      Search first, ask questions later.
    16. Re:It has to be said... by bafu · · Score: 1

      Unless... unless the original data was stored on DVD in the first place and you just took those DVDs with you. Then you'd save some time since the other method (Route B, let's say) would require you to copy the data off the old DVDs and to destroy the original DVDs (so the sender wouldn't have them anymore, just as he doesn't with Route A)! An even greater savings of time would be gained in cases where the data at the far end was going to be stored on DVD anyway! In fact, since it doesn't involve copying any data to or from the DVD at all, the MPAA could not have any problem with Method A, despite the fact that it could be used to transmit huge amounts of copyrighted data!

      Of course, the Teamsters might induce outages if they weren't involved in the transport layer of Route A...

      ...

      Anyway, I'm guessing the original example is not really a serious proposal as much as a useful illustration of the relationship between "bandwidth" and "latency" and what we would consider the speed of a transfer method. So, maybe you really shouldn't feel you need to overanalyze it as if it was a serious networking proposal. Still, I had fun... hope you did, too.

    17. Re:It has to be said... by twiztidlojik · · Score: 1

      Of course, the Teamsters might induce outages if they weren't involved in the transport layer of Route A...

      OMFG! Mod this one up!

      --
      I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
    18. Re:It has to be said... by vsprintf · · Score: 1

      Been to your home page, I have

      Phear not to abandon your relationship with VB

      Rewrite everything in Tcl/Tk

      Enjoy the pain, and know that you are cleansed :-)

    19. Re:It has to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obvious signs of a rice boy.

    20. Re:It has to be said... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2

      Yeah, as was pointed out, I wasn't being entirely serious, and was calling upon my favorite analogy for explaining the difference between latency and bandwidth (though I didn't make it up)...

      But as long as you are, why aren't DVD's an acceptable format to store the data in once it arrives? I was kinda assuming that the data we wanted to transfer in the first place was on DVD... After all, what could more bandwidth be used for but movie sharing? ;)

      But whatever method I used, I could certainly do it faster than a single average hard drive. If I can fill 100 box cars with dvd's, I can buy ten thousand DVD writers, and ten thousand readers. Or hell, just buy enough hard drives to make a direct copy, ship those, and plug them in at the other end.

      But now I'm curious.

      Let's take a box car that is 40'x10'x15'. Not too big. Let's take a jewel case to be 6"x8"x0.5", which is slightly overestimating the volume, but the math is easier. :) That turns out to be 384,000 DVD's per car, * 100 cars is 38,400,000 DVD's, * 9.7GB (G = 10^9, like disk drive manufacturers use) per dual-sided DVD is 3.7248e+17 Bytes, or about 372 petabytes. At 400Mb/s (M = 2^20) = 50MB/s, it would take 7.1e+9 seconds, or 225 years to download the data.

      So all I need are a few DVD manufacturing facilities, and I'm pretty sure I can beat that. :)

      Probably the hardest part would be finding 372 petabytes of non-redundant information to transfer. Unless you -want- a few million copies of Titanic. ;)

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    21. Re:It has to be said... by mindstrm · · Score: 2

      Can it?
      that's 6,646 cd's worth of stuff in 24 hours.
      Your plane would move more than that.

      So if your destination and source media are CD, the airplane is faster.
      If it's NOT, the airplane is much slower, factoring in the time it will take to read all those cds.

    22. Re:It has to be said... by LouCephyr · · Score: 1

      The latancy isn't too amusing tho

    23. Re:It has to be said... by RetroGeek · · Score: 1

      What you need is Raid 0/1 with a hot standby drive.

      Striping and mirroring on dual channels. You can lose two drives and it still keeps working. Add hot swap, and it just keeps on working.....

      Course it costs a bit more :-)

      --

      - - - - - - - - - - -
      I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
  8. Obligatory Simpsons Quote: by Navius+Eurisko · · Score: 5, Funny

    Marge: "Does anyone need that much porn?"

    Homer (drooling): "One million times faster...."

    1. Re:Obligatory Simpsons Quote: by onefish-twofish · · Score: 1

      fiber optic t1?

      token ring ethernet?

      maybe comic book guy is trolling...

      otherwise i liked the post

  9. Darn... by errorlevel · · Score: 4, Funny

    Suddenly my DSL no longer seems fast enough.

    --


    The Moo went "Cow!"
    1. Re:Darn... by Some+Dumbass... · · Score: 1

      Suddenly my DSL no longer seems fast enough.

      Suddenly my cable modem doesn't seem so fast either! Oh wait, it's 7pm local time :)

  10. Ping rate? by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 4, Insightful

    401 Mb/s is great, but what sort of ping rates were they getting?

    1. Re:Ping rate? by ndevice · · Score: 1

      well, since it took about 13 seconds to do that, and assuming that the other end had some way of telling them that they were done, maximum ping time would be 13 seconds. (and assuming that the machine at the other end didn't choke on that much data and die)

      But why worry about ping times? I'd gladly set up a modem line between those two places to handle control traffic if I can even have one way bandwidth like that.

      (unless your post was meant to be funny)

    2. Re:Ping rate? by tomstdenis · · Score: 1

      Actually no he had legit cause there. Ping time plays a big role in say online gaming or say remote surgery.

      Sure really fast connections are neato but if you have a 250ms ping minimum that just sucks!

      Ideally you would want the minimum ping time with maximum bandwidth [duh] which is what this internet2 achieves [well closer than the public internet]

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    3. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      assuming 64 byte long icmp echo/reply packets and using my kcalc:

      64*8 / 401 mbps = 1.218xE-6 seconds (one way)

      1.218xE-6 * 2 = 2.435xE-6 seconds (roundtrip)

    4. Re:Ping rate? by Captain+Pooh · · Score: 1

      http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/ippm/draft-ietf -ippm-owdp-02.txt There is this protocol being develop called One-Way Delay Measurement Protocol which is like ping but has better features like security, it supports encrypted mode stuff like that

    5. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Negative ones.

    6. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. Try thinking about what ping actually measures before you run out of drool.

    7. Re:Ping rate? by edrugtrader · · Score: 5, Funny

      lets just say you've lost before your computer even boots up

      --
      MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
    8. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sweet! Encrypted one way pings. That's good if you don't want anyone to know how latent you are, maybe. Not even you. (as time skew on the two machines would factor in to the delay, if you don't send a packet back to the originating clock)

      Sounds like it's meant for data transfer, though, not latency testing, specifically. Some fad, even. "Hey, let's replace TCP with something better." What you can't do with TCP you should be able to do with UDP. Defining encryption in the packet protocol is a horrid idea, anyway. Then you have to throw away the packet protocol if the encryption is breakable (which it will be).

      Of course, ICMP was probably designed for something else, too.

    9. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It only takes a small ounce of common sense to realize that if you have high latency then that will limit the effective throughput of a protocol each time it has to wait on a response from the other end. Think about it, if you can get that Quake packet (or remote medical equipment) across the network in .0000000000000000001s but it takes 0.250s before the first byte arrives at the other end, your responsiveness will be limited by that 250ms latency. If you are playing with a friend with equally shitty latency it will take a full 500ms for his client to see your latest update. In addition, while you can just add n identical pipes and improve your bandwidth by a factor of n, your latency will not improve.

      (unless your post was meant to be facetiously retarded, that is why you "worry about ping times")

    10. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Less than 13 seconds, I'd say.

    11. Re:Ping rate? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      well, if you're interested in one-way bandwidth you may find the xfer speeds of digital TV satellites impressive. I'm roughly guessing that the one I'm watching now is doing at LEAST 100 channels at 30Mb/sec each (more likely 200 at 20Mb/sec...) maybe an order of magnitude better than this land speed record...

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    12. Re:Ping rate? by be-fan · · Score: 2

      Actually, no. The sat might be broadcasting 100 30mb/sec channels, but each link is only 30mb/sec.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    13. Re:Ping rate? by maswan · · Score: 1
      Well, 250 ms ping times seems resonable. That is what I see from here in Sweden to alaska.edu on an i2 link. I would guess that they get at most 50 ms lower ping times.

      And if my quick calculations are right (the distance and c is known, the difference between c and the glass medium can found out (I didn't, I just guessed, these were quick calculations)), about half of that is the propagation time for the light.

      That is the big problem with long distances, there is a hard limit on how low the latency can get.

      /Mattias Wadenstein

    14. Re:Ping rate? by packeteer · · Score: 1

      this will NOT be fun because someone could send youa huge amount of usless packets to you with encrypted return addresses... just asking to be dos'es

      --
      unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
    15. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to have a stack that makes TCP use a larger window size in order to get around that (probably on the order of a couple MB in this case.)

    16. Re:Ping rate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there is a hard limit on how low the latency can get.
      Wrong again my friend. You open a quantum hole in the fiber media and transmit a quantum packet into the sigularity. yeah... limit on ping times. geezsh.

    17. Re:Ping rate? by phaze3000 · · Score: 2
      Erm.. wtf are you talking about? 13 second ping time???!!!

      Maximum size of an IP packet using fiber = 4470 bytes. Transfer rate of 50 mbytes/second.
      Ping time is therefore 8ms according to my calculations, although I really suck at maths, so I could be wrong.. :)

      As for using a modem to handle control traffic.. the modem wouldn't be able to send back ACK packets nearly fast enough, it'd seriously limit the transfer speed..

      --
      Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
    18. Re:Ping rate? by dingbarks · · Score: 1

      thats a pretty heavy article, seems a logical method but then again does that (logic) matter anymore..........:)

    19. Re:Ping rate? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      MPEG2 broadcasting doesn't work like that, rather channels are grouped into "multiplex" bundles. True, each multiplex might ony add up to 5 or 10 discrete channels but they're NOT seperate streams. Not that it matters much, there are many microwave links that easily surpass 400Mbps.

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    20. Re:Ping rate? by tomstdenis · · Score: 1

      All I know is I get a 70ms ping with my buddy in the same city with a cable modem. Close enough for some jedi knights saber action.... muhahahahahaha

      tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    21. Re:Ping rate? by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      That won't help. The latency is bounded by the speed of light, and while a larger window size may increase bandiwdth, it cannot reduce latency below the hard limit dictated by physics.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  11. Heh by ObviousGuy · · Score: 0, Funny

    Shit, I passed for than that this morning.

    Damn Montezuma!

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Heh by ObviousGuy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hmm... Someone found a computer I logged into...

      Please mod down. (this one too)

      --
      I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    2. Re:Heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      perhaps you should re-read the password security article posted earlier today.

  12. Netjunk. by saintlupus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The rate of 401 megabits per second achieved in transferring 625 megabytes of data from Fairbanks, Alaska to Amsterdam in the Netherlands is over 8000 times greater than the fastest dial-up modem.

    Must be nice to have a pipe that's not full of SPAM, pop-up ads, Code Red, Nimda, SQLSnake, Gnutella, ARP scans from the braindead fucks at my ISP, AIM crap...

    --saint

    1. Re:Netjunk. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bullshit. Most universities residence halls are on interent2. All that junk is out there :P

    2. Re:Netjunk. by gerf · · Score: 0
      we're not on internet2... but of course, we're private too... and our admins are nazis.......

      @ u of dayton that is

    3. Re:Netjunk. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only that, but now the university kiddiez can really move that pron and mp3z along with all those ISOz

    4. Re:Netjunk. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... web based graphical user interfaces, web based chat, this reply, ...

    5. Re:Netjunk. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey! What's wrong with Gnutella? Leave it alone.

  13. hmmm by Torinaga-Sama · · Score: 1

    Is that why my ping spiked....?

    --
    (/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
  14. Dear god I can only imagine! by GePS · · Score: 0, Redundant

    picture this: you're at the University of Fairbanks, and there's warmth to stimulate action that would satiate those college-age hormones. But wait! Someone you know in Sweden has Debbie Does Dallas on divx! Huzah! You are now only going to have to wait a few seconds to start wanking, as opposed to the normal hour for transfer of the relaxation material.

    The internet is full of wonders.

  15. It will never help me. by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some day, I'll have that kind of bandwidth running to my home. And my ISP will still disallow my personal telnet server because of the strain it will put on the network.

    1. Re:It will never help me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ISP's are funny. Almost all of them have these AUP terms like that. Some of them DON'T enforce them however. otoh some not6 only check to see if you're violating the no-servers rule, they actually block common service ports.
      you could bind sshd to a highport like 2222 and see if they notice.

    2. Re:It will never help me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention the misconfigured router shipping packets to north carolina and back.

    3. Re:It will never help me. by wings · · Score: 1

      Some day, I'll have that kind of bandwidth running to my home. And my ISP will still disallow my personal telnet server because of the strain it will put on the network.

      ...and they'll still cap you at 3GB/month, after which you're connection will be throttled to 28Kb/s, unless you pay more.

    4. Re:It will never help me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've had mine routed from PA, to FL, and back to PA.

  16. wow by teslatug · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally finding the pr0n becomes the bottle-neck.

    Pr0n jokes are obligatory for this kind of story, read the manual.

    1. Re:wow by distributed.karma · · Score: 1
      > Pr0n jokes are obligatory for this kind of story

      With me and pr0n, it's my urethra that's the real bottleneck.

      --

      --
      If you moderate this, then your children will be next.

    2. Re:wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Pr0n jokes are obligatory for this kind of story, read the manual.

      Can't find it--I tried 'man woman' but the system just started acting queer...

  17. So how fast does it fill up? by mick88 · · Score: 2

    Somebody's law says the more space you have the easier it is to fill with junk - be it drivespace or bandwidth. Just like 28.8 used to kick ass, I think that 400 mbps will become slow. How soon though?

    --
    I created this account just so I could comment on this story
    1. Re:So how fast does it fill up? by uchian · · Score: 2

      "Hey cool! We don't needs to bother compressing movies anymore, hey we don't even need to compress 'em to DVD quality! We can just send them at the full whopping 250mbps that they take up!"

      "Oh, hang on, damn this 400mbps connections slow - hell I can only download one mega high-quality movie at a time ot it starts breaking up!"

      or something.

    2. Re:So how fast does it fill up? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      SDI normally runs at 270Mbps, Dual-Link HD-SDI at 3.6Gbps. I'd say there's a way to go before I start doing video over IP across continents...

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
  18. at the RIAA headquaters... by DanThe1Man · · Score: 5, Funny

    News of faster internet made HIllary Rosen faint.

    Someone shouted, "quick get some smelling salts".
    Someone else said, "Here, use this sharpie marker."

    1. Re:at the RIAA headquaters... by linzeal · · Score: 1

      Someone quickly ripped hilary rosen into an mp3 at the discovery she was no long copyright-protected. Users of Edonkey and Kazaa were disapointed till an 8 year old in Lake Tahoe released a Techno Remix.

  19. Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And of course, Debian was there first :)

    1. Re:Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apt-get bloody fast install

    2. Re:Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apt-get-fucked-quicker

  20. AOL Super-Shiny Un-named Metal by cadillactux · · Score: 1

    Just in time for AOL's umpteen-millionth release, the AOL Super-Shinny-Un-named-Metal Release will succeed Gold, Platinum, and Titanium with a ultra-high connection speed. Now you can StarWars.mid in only 1 hour and 42 minutes! 99.3x10^-4 times faster than with AOL 7.0!

    --
    Is this thing on?
  21. What next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    We're in need of faster CD burners, it would seem.
    Haha... that's what we need...
  22. Record broken again 30 seconds later by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...when they realised it was Britney Spears' latest album, they sent it straight back even faster.

  23. Land Speed Record by yobbo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Amsterdam and Alaska are separated by water, so I don't see how this can be a new land speed record, unless Jesus is involved.

    1. Re:Land Speed Record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jesus is always involved in high speed pr0n downloads.

      Hackers4Jesus!

    2. Re:Land Speed Record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps there's land under the water.
      Perhaps by "land record" they mean "not radio or microwave or laser or etc."

    3. Re:Land Speed Record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they went over the north pole, so it's an ice speed record...

    4. Re:Land speed record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, since electrical pulses travel at the speed of light, I'd say its about 186,000 miles per second.

    5. Re:Land Speed Record by schwatoo · · Score: 1

      Didn't Jesus walk on water? I think perhaps you mean Moses.

      --
      I have trouble with passwords among other things.
    6. Re:Land speed record by jjeff · · Score: 1

      Well dylan,

      considering a mile is ~1.6 KM

      i dont see how you get a value of MPH that is higher than KMH.

      --
      when everything is working perfectly.. BREAK SOMETHING before something else FUCKS up!
    7. Re:Land speed record by linuxator · · Score: 1

      And as it probably ran over fibre, not copper wires...:P

      --
      * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    8. Re:Land Speed Record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't see where you see land speed, regardless, they don't lay cables on top of the water. You did realize there is land underneath that water? Land speed would apply so long as it's passing through cables/wires and not wireless. You nitpicking piece of fucking shit.

    9. Re:Land speed record by Yottabyte84 · · Score: 2
      no......

      (B = bytes, b=bits)



      625MB * 8b/1B = 5000 Mb / 401Mb/sec = 12.5 sec



      401Mb/sec * 1048576Mb/1b = 420478976b/sec



      You CAN'T derive physical speed from that. Bits travel at the speed of light, and bits per second is dependant on the lenght of time each bit lasts, in this case, a fraction of a nanosecond.

    10. Re:Land speed record by Sycophant · · Score: 1

      Well, that would be my inability to chose when to devide and when to multiply.

      It's closer to 2.01M MPH I guess...

    11. Re:Land speed record by vipw · · Score: 1

      i think you got the descriptors messed up there, should be 3.3M mph and 5.4M km/h.

      but the calculations seem good if you assume the distance traveled was roughly half the circumference of the earth.

    12. Re:Land speed record by hpa · · Score: 2

      Well, you have a metric, which is bandwidth multiplied by distance, in this case 4.9Pbit*m/s... you can get the equivalent metric by sticking 35343 CD-ROMs worth of data in the back of a van and driving it at 100km/h down the freeway. Isn't statistics fun? :)

    13. Re:Land speed record by Sycophant · · Score: 1

      It was an abstract calculation, involving the fact that the item (in this case, a 625MB data archive) moved a certain distance (12,272KM) in a specific period of time (13 seconds).

      Assuming the speed was linear, then in an hour it would have moved 3,398,400 Kilometers.

      ((60/13)*60)*12272

    14. Re:Land speed record by hpa · · Score: 2

      Oh yes, each bit much have lasted at least 40ms -- the time it takes light to travel 12272km in a vacuum. In an optical fiber it would take even longer. Now, if you're transmitting at 401Mbit/s, and assuming the speed of light in vacuum, each bit is just about 75cm long, which means it swoshes by an observer (such as the receiver) at about 2.5ns -- not even that is "a fraction of a nanosecond."

    15. Re:Land Speed Record by meringuoid · · Score: 1

      Didn't Jesus walk on water? I think perhaps you mean Moses. Yep, Moses... or possibly the other geezer. God often does repeats of his most popular stunts (compare the almost identical feedings of 5000 and 4000, which literalists will presumably insist were separate occasions because the number's different), and this was no exception. Some fellow working for God did the same trick, but with the river Jordan, rather than the Red Sea.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    16. Re:Land speed record by Yottabyte84 · · Score: 2
      not even that is "a fraction of a nanosecond."


      I goofed by a factor of 10. Also, they could easily send several bits at a time, like in multimode fiber.

    17. Re:Land Speed Record by rtaylor · · Score: 2

      As a Canadian we believe Jesus walked on water -- of course it was winter and the water was frozen at the time.

      --
      Rod Taylor
    18. Re:Land Speed Record by gerf · · Score: 0
      reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, reasonable...

      CHILDISH!

      but that's the fun part, isn't it, hehe

    19. Re:Land Speed Record by CMonk · · Score: 1

      Jesus walked on water. Moses merely parted the sea.

    20. Re:Land Speed Record by gerf · · Score: 0

      um, all those posts above me are nonsensical. they're sending more than one bit at a time, not waiting for each one to reach before sending the next. so, the time each takes cannot be accurately calculated. anywho, maybe i'm wrong, but maybe i'm not... who even knows truth from fiction in these damn replies

    21. Re:Land speed record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, that would be my inability to chose when to devide and when to multiply.

      Or maybe just your inability to spell divide.

    22. Re:Land speed record by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 1

      not ALL the way, Einstein

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    23. Re:Land Speed Record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, as Tanenbaum said, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of Jesus driving a station wagon across the atlantic ocean".

      Er, that *was* the quote, right?

    24. Re:Land Speed Record by emmons · · Score: 1

      Yes, you're wrong.

      Next please.

      (Of course they send more than one packet at a time, everyone does. It's called a packet, and can be several hundred bytes long. Furthermore, of course they don't wait for one bit to arrive before they send the next. Not only would it be nearly impossible to control traffic one bit at a time, it'd be terribly inefficient. For TCP it's called flow control, and isn't byte for byte. For UDP you never get acknowledgment that your packet has been received.)

      --
      Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
    25. Re:Land Speed Record by SteakandcheeseUm · · Score: 1

      MATT Chapter 14, verses 22-35:
      22Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24but the boat was already a considerable distance[1] from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
      25During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.
      27But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."
      28"Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
      29"Come," he said.
      30Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"
      31Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"
      32And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
      34When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. 35And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him 36and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.

      From: http://www.gospelcom.net/

    26. Re:Land speed record by linuxator · · Score: 1

      but still mostly...

      --
      * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    27. Re:Land Speed Record by geekoid · · Score: 2

      there is land at the bottom of the ocean.
      If only we some sort of...cabling that went under water..naaa nobody could ever do that...

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  24. Land speed record by Sycophant · · Score: 2, Informative

    If I am not mistaken (and I could be, I suck at maths).

    It traveled at about 3,345,350 KM/H, or about 5,352,560 MPH...

  25. One Word... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WHOA!

  26. LOC? by sean23007 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, but how many Libraries of Congress is that? Until they release their accomplishment in Libraries-of-Congress-per-second, it means absolutely nothing to me, or anyone else. Right?

    --

    Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
    1. Re:LOC? by DanThe1Man · · Score: 1

      Thats a great joke, but seriously, how big is a "Library of Congress." I would like to know so next time some stupid journlist says that I know what they really mean.

    2. Re:LOC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      According to this, about 20 tb (not counting images): http://www.archive.org/xterabytes.html

  27. Free and Fastest by bfree · · Score: 2

    Debian
    Now if only Debian was the sort of corporate entity that would use this for it's own propaganda purposes! Maybe IBM will run a few ads of people viewing 9000x6750 streaming video on their Debian 7x7 (hmmm, 6x8 head G200 plus another G200!) xinerama display PC!

    --

    Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

    1. Re:Free and Fastest by bfree · · Score: 2

      "We don't need no stinking compression" IBM

      --

      Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

    2. Re:Free and Fastest by SlugLord · · Score: 1

      why not just have remote virtual PCs? Get a massive supercomputer and a bunch of remotely located dumb terminals. Stream the video and transmit the keystrokes. We NEED to use the extra bandwidth and porn just can't fill the void.

  28. just imagine... by Ubergrendle · · Score: 0

    ...a beowulf cluster of those! ;)

    --
    John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
  29. Props by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think we should give props to those NIC cards running on the linux kernel ethernet drivers

  30. Does Internet2 use standard IPv6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is a seperated network?
    No routers bridge the Internet and Internet2?

    1. Re:Does Internet2 use standard IPv6? by perky · · Score: 4, Informative
      Does Internet2 use standard IPv6?
      http://www.internet2.edu


      Why is a seperated network?

      You think they are going to spend all that money on a serious research network only to let Joe Public use al, the bandwidth on pr0n?

      --
      "The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
    2. Re:Does Internet2 use standard IPv6? by ShadowDrgn · · Score: 2

      You think they are going to spend all that money on a serious research network only to let Joe Public use al, the bandwidth on pr0n?

      College resnets are hooked up to the Internet2 as well, so I assure you there's plenty of bandwidth being used on pr0n.

    3. Re:Does Internet2 use standard IPv6? by grazzy · · Score: 1

      ofcourse not, its for john von academic to to download beavers on.

  31. I hate marketroids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    scientist: across 7625 miles (12,272 km)
    marketroid: no, no you need to say "more than" 7625 miles
    scientist: but that isn't true, you have to subtract a bit before you can say "more than"
    marketroid: a bit? like how much?
    scientist: oh I don't know, subtract 10 or 25 miles
    marketroid: we'll subtract 17 miles and say "more than"
    lame website: "across more than 7608 miles (12,272 km)"

  32. Yeah, but wait till COX gets ahold of it... by TWX_the_Linux_Zealot · · Score: 0, Troll

    ... and bandwidth restricts it to 128K...

    --

    IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
    And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
  33. Beats sending a hard copy any day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Strap a CD to a hypersonic jet travelling at 944,000 m/s and what have you got? Well... nothing really, it would burn up in the atmosphere.

  34. Compression and such.. by wbav · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This article, I feel is more than a little vauge. What did they use to transfer? Was it just over electrical/telephone lines, or did they use optics? What kind of compression was used, and what kind of signal boosters/optical repeaters were used in sending this. All of these items could be used to affect the speed of transfer, and well, the article just doesn't say. I mean in theory, one could build a router from parallel to serial that could take data at 9.6 terabits/sec. How are they actually measuring things? Just the time between there and here? Using full optical lines, wouldn't they be able to set the record at c * the index of refraction of the fiberoptic line? It would just be a matter of putting all the data into one block of light.

    Also the article suggested only one way communication, what happens with error checking and such?

    --

    =================
    Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
    1. Re:Compression and such.. by mindstrm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You are speaking theoretically.

      Yes, you could send data much faster than this over fiber. We do it in labs all the time. HEck, we do it in networks over copper all the time (GigE..)

      This is an actual working network, and they send the data from Alaska to The Netherlands at 400mbps. That is fantastic.

  35. only half of the story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do they only tell us the bandwidth? What about the latency? Until they tell us the latency, I'm only drooling out of one side of my mouth.

  36. Telnet?!? by Yottabyte84 · · Score: 2

    Why on earth would you run telnet instead of SSH? Do you LIKE sending your password over the wire in the clear for any idiot to sniff?

    1. Re:Telnet?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up, homo. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

    2. Re:Telnet?!? by MavEtJu · · Score: 1

      Stop complaining about the example and start complaining about the context.

      (In case you didn't get it, she/he's complaining about the fact that his ISP doesn't allow her/him to connect to services running on her/his computer).

      --
      bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
    3. Re:Telnet?!? by Yottabyte84 · · Score: 2

      Some idiot sniffing the password from a telnet session

      SSH is encrypted, and can only be attacked via a man-in-the-middle attack, and any good ssh client will notice this and whine.

    4. Re:Telnet?!? by Yottabyte84 · · Score: 2

      Yes, I got that, but his ISP could very likely be blocking telnet because wingates run on the same port and is often set up for open access by mistake and gets abused by spammers and script kiddies. If this person was running ssh on some weird high port where scanning programs couldn't find it, then they'd have a good reason to gripe.

    5. Re:Telnet?!? by rtaylor · · Score: 2

      What? You mean you don't used encrypted telnet? Doesn't do all the tricks of ssh, but when you don't care about the content of the session it's quite a bit lighter weight.

      --
      Rod Taylor
    6. Re:Telnet?!? by fmaxwell · · Score: 2

      It was an example. Chill out.

    7. Re:Telnet?!? by ComaVN · · Score: 1

      SSH is encrypted, and can only be attacked via a man-in-the-middle attack, and any good ssh client will notice this and whine.

      Actually the easiest way to attack SSH is the man-looking-over-your-shoulder attack, or the man-installing-the-keylogger attack, and neither will cause the ssh client to whine about anything.

      Telnet (and ftp, same deal) will do just fine when you're on a switched network. (As long as it's not super-duper important stuff you're doing.)

      --
      Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
    8. Re:Telnet?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using a switch instead of a hub doesn't really improve security. It's possible to flood the switch, causing it to act like a hub, or to spoof your MAC address.

    9. Re:Telnet?!? by Yottabyte84 · · Score: 2

      Using public key auth for SSH solves both those problems.

  37. Sure, it's fast now... by I.T.R.A.R.K. · · Score: 0

    ...as I'm sure the original internet was when it was first tested(arpanet?). Then came the masses, and look at what we have now. The internet 2 will eventually suffer the same bottlenecks as the original we use today.

    --

    "Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."

  38. Standard PC? by linuxator · · Score: 1

    Well as raport states, there were two standard PC's running on debian. Well what it means? It means that bottleneck should be on those two machines. As atleast I don't think that 64bit/66MHz PCI bus is standard on PC world... well... and there are limitations about 300/400Mbit on standard 32bit/33MHz PCI bus, as i remember. Also i think that data used for benchmark was random seed, not from CD or hardisk, becose CD's and HDD's of standard PC are much slower...

    --
    * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    1. Re:Standard PC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      errr. 32 bit * 33Mhz != 300Mbit. It's not a very difficult calculation.

    2. Re:Standard PC? by linuxator · · Score: 1

      300-400Mbit/s was based on reallife benchmarks on linux posted on either /. or osnews recently... cant remember which

      --
      * Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
    3. Re:Standard PC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, no. 32bits x 33Mhz = 1056Mbit (However, the max sustained bandwidth of PCI is usually around 100Mbyte/sec, or 800Mbit/sec... more than enough to have conducted this test with nothing more than a $40 Gigabit Ethernet card)

  39. Must be DNA information ... by Aceticon · · Score: 2

    transferring the equivalent of an entire compact disc's contents across more than 7608 miles (12,272 km) of network in 13 seconds

    It's probably the DNA codes for a polar worm.

  40. Woohoo by csguy314 · · Score: 1

    Downloading woody off that machine would definitely make up for pushing back the stable release date!

    --
    This is left as an exercise for the reader.
  41. Ugh... juuuust got my hopes up. by Bollie · · Score: 1

    Debian Woody in less than two minutes

    For a moment there, I believed that Woody will be released in the next two minutes. Ah well... maybe when I get the bandwidth, Woody'll reach stable...

  42. Is it possible? by ziggy_zero · · Score: 1

    For larger gap to emerge between the current consumer internet (dial-up, dsl, cable) and a new form of Internet? I can see one (the current) becoming a lowlier, cheaper, seedier, less secure, internet "underground" if you will, and a new one emerging that's faster, more standardized and secure, but more expensive, and used by high-class citizens and businesses. Any thoughts?

    --
    I belong to the ______ generation.
    1. Re:Is it possible? by DarkZero · · Score: 2

      I can see one (the current) becoming a lowlier, cheaper, seedier, less secure, internet "underground" if you will

      With the exception of "cheaper" (in price, that is), isn't the current internet already the pinnacle of those adjectives?

  43. Back in the good old days... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This has been going on for a long time, of course. Actually, we (in McIntosh hall) once showed a swedish nurses porn flick on the wall of the neighboring residence hall (it was Nerland hall). The Nerlandites weren't amused; I'm not sure why. We DID invite them to come over and watch.

    This was a 16mm film, long before digital movies were practical (about 1982 or '83).

  44. Statistics Schmastics by aengblom · · Score: 5, Funny

    is over 8000 times greater than the fastest dial-up modem

    I just LOVE sem-relevant comparisons! ;-). And the fastest car on earth goes 8000 times faster than I crawl! Next time let's compare it to at least DSL!

    --


    So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
    1. Re:Statistics Schmastics by alainsane · · Score: 1

      What they mean is that it will take only 8000 modems to bog it!
      Hmmmm, how many modems does the typical ISP support?
      Won't be long before that pipe needs RotoRouter.

      --
      1+1=10
    2. Re:Statistics Schmastics by tunah · · Score: 2
      And the fastest car on earth goes 8000 times faster than I crawl!

      Say you can crawl only 1 meter in 10 seconds. Then the speed of the car=8000(1/10)=800m/s=2.9km/hr! Where do I buy this car?

      There's always one...

      --
      Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
    3. Re:Statistics Schmastics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Then the speed of the car=8000(1/10)=800m/s=2.9km/hr

      You must have quite different math/physics book than I do. 800m/s * 60 s/min * 60 min/h * 0.001km/m = 2880km/h ~ 1789 mph.

    4. Re:Statistics Schmastics by tunah · · Score: 2

      Oops... 2.9, 2900 whats the difference

      --
      Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
  45. So... there is already a new by JFMulder · · Score: 5, Funny

    Napster on Internet 2? Damn these guys are quick!!!

    1. Re:So... there is already a new by wwwgregcom · · Score: 1

      Still using napster? Id say they are rather slow.

      --
      What signature defines me as a person?
  46. I just really, really like Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My guess is that the traffic went around in swirls.

  47. From the Article by Quizme2000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Debian Woody in less than two minutes"

    Any woman will tell you waiting more than 90 seconds for a "Debian Woody" is unacceptable. My personal best is nearly 1/3 of that.

    Its a joke..get it? No...RTFM

    --
    "Get them before they get....
    1. Re:From the Article by JonWan · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and it had better last longer than 13 seconds.

  48. Hyper Sneaker Net by jhiv · · Score: 1

    It's funny how the expressions for the top end of sneaker-net have changed over the years. In my college days, it was a station-wagon full of mag tapes. (You know, the old 80 MB reel to reel things you see in 70s era TV shows.) In my father's day, it was a car full of punch cards. (They were the..., oh never mind)

    Let's see now...
    With the back seat folded down, you probably could get about four rows across and eight down, each say 15 high. That gives us 480 tapes, about 38 GB. At 60 mph, we get 230 GB mph or 640 MB mile per second. These guys just did 7608 * 401 = MB miles per second, or 3 TB miles per second, beating my old white station wagon by a factor of 4800.

    Ok, I'm impressed.

    1. Re:Hyper Sneaker Net by moonbeam · · Score: 1

      Ibm has announced a tape cart that can hold one terabyte. Image what that does to your calculation!

      But ya know, it isn't the terabytes you need to worry about. It's the petafiles.

      --
      ---- perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(1 15),10);'
    2. Re:Hyper Sneaker Net by UranusReallyHertz · · Score: 1

      just multiply by 1024/38. It comes to about 81. IBM said that the areal density of those tapes is 900mbits/inch^2. Sony has announced a new record areal tape density of 11 Gb/in^2, so the IBM tape could hold 12.2 terabytes, so his number would be 988.2. DAMN

      --
      Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
  49. Old news! by chuckcolby · · Score: 5, Funny

    They actually had it ready 2 weeks ago, but were unable to transfer the cd until they used a felt tip marker around the edge.

    --
    We all get along together like tornadoes and trailer parks.
  50. Bandwidth Challenge SC2001 by anzha · · Score: 3, Informative

    Every year there is a competition at the high performance conference (Supercomputing 2001 was this last one). It is entitled the 'Bandwidth Challenge'. This last year, NERSC took first place with a 3.3 gigabit/second sustained graphically represented simulation using seaborg.

    Now, admittedly, it wasn't intercontinental, only from Oakland, Ca to Denver, Co....:D

    --
    Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
  51. I work there and... by RumGunner · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't think anybody at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks even knew this was happening. I think those crazy Dutch just slurped down the image from our local linux mirror (which is maintained by our LUG).

    It seems sort of bad form. The mirror is there for everyone, but bandwidth for the sake of bandwidth....

    And now of course, EVERYONE will start trying to see how fast they can suck down our bandwidth. I bet my internet connection at work is terrible tomorrow.

    1. Re:I work there and... by jabley · · Score: 1

      It also seems odd to brag so loudly about a sustained transfer of 400Mbit/s between North America and Europe. That's really not particularly fast.

      There are plenty of ISPs with multiple 10Gbit/s circuits across the Atlantic, and within Europe and North America, and they all sell colo on dedicated gigabit ethernet. Speed record my ass.

    2. Re:I work there and... by pavera · · Score: 2, Insightful

      what you forget is a 1gbps ethernet connection might get 300mbps of actual throughput.. and its almost always much lower than that (at work between 2 servers with 1gbps nics, I can normally get throughput of about 150-250mbps) and thats 2 computers sitting right next to each other on the rack.

      Across the atlantic, 400mbps is pretty darn impressive.

    3. Re:I work there and... by jabley · · Score: 1

      If you're using a single TCP session to transfer the data, and your transmit and receive windows are not set appropriately large, or if the hardware you are using is under-spec, then sure.

      On the other hand if you transferred the data in some other way (in parallel over multiple TCP sessions, or over UDP), you could exceed 400Mbit/s trivially. I saw nothing in the release which suggested a single TCP session was used.

      The Internet2 people are just trying to promote their network as somehow record-breaking, when in fact many commercial "Internet1" networks are years ahead of them.

    4. Re:I work there and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then check the links in the anouncement. I read that it has to be between two IP addresses and TCP. My University connects to Internet2 and I start sweating when I realize that in some cases it is just like commodity Internet. At some point the router makes a decision on which way to send the packet, using BGP. Not much traffic now, maybe I'll try a traceroute to Alaska.

    5. Re:I work there and... by pavera · · Score: 1

      hardware: 2 servers, each 15k scsi drives, dual 1ghz p3, 2GB RAM. Hardly under-spec. granted, single tcp sessions, not UDP,
      and I agree, it isn't "a record" in speed, but how would you like to download a cd from amsterdam in 13 seconds? its still pretty impressive.

  52. Not faster than the speed of light by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    assuming 64 byte long icmp echo/reply packets and using my kcalc:

    64*8 / 401 mbps = 1.218xE-6 seconds (one way)

    1.218xE-6 * 2 = 2.435xE-6 seconds (roundtrip)


    Hmmm....

    1/2.435xE-6 seconds * 7608 miles = 3124435318 miles/second

    (6248870636 mi/sec if you consider round trip like you did)

    ... which is A FEW ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE faster than the speed of light. This is due to an error in your math, seeing as how you can't compute a ping time based on throughput. I suggest that you learn a little bit more about how networking REALLY works (and a bit of physics too) before you try this kind of parlor trick again.

  53. Can we use it as an FTP server?? by Maddog_Delphi97 · · Score: 1

    Great! Can it be used to host the Doom 3 videos?

  54. WOW!! Imagine the time I could save! by Baka*Exp+2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'd hit my monthly DL limit in under 10 minutes :-( What would I do for the rest of the month?

  55. so it is an equivalent of CD travelling at 944km/s by Technomancer · · Score: 1

    12272 km / 13 seconds = 944km/s
    the question now is how fat the pipe has to be
    to beat the speed of light ? :)

  56. The guy that got sacked (again) by reality-bytes · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does anybody remember this urban legend?

    There was a IT engineer based in London who was sacked because he couldn't get the ping rate between the London and N.Y.C. corporate offices below 20ms.......His boss didn't see the "speed of light" as a valid excuse!!

    --
    Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
  57. good prices on workshops by Moosifer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Internet2 page has some events and workshops that look like they might be really good deals. I registered for the IPV6 3 day workshop at the University of Utah for only $100.00 - as long as it doesn't suck, that should be money well spent.

  58. More Obligatory Simpsons Quotes by Metrollica · · Score: 1

    Cut to the Comic Book Guy on his PC. He's typing away. Oh, Captain Janeway... Lace -- the final brassiere!

    Despite having found what he wants, his modem is very slow and he's impatient.

    Comic Book Guy: Ugh, this high-speed modem is intolerably slow!

    The picture slowly appears, line by line, but as soon as it gets to the cleavage, an ad for "Internet King" (Homer) appears and covers any nudity on the screen.

    Comic Book Guy: What the-- the Internet King... I wonder if he can provide faster nudity.

    Comic Book Guy sees one of Homer's ads on a porn site, So Comic Book Guy goes to Homer's "office"!

    At the office...

    Homer: Welcome to the Internet, my friend, how can I help you?

    Comic Book Guy: I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber optic T1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?

    Homer: [stares blankly for a few seconds] Can I have some money now?

    --



    --Metrollica
    1. Re:More Obligatory Simpsons Quotes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      omg dude..lol..i have seen every simpsons that is at least 1 year old about 10 times, you must rly have no life..lol

  59. impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    lets add as many services, users and router/switch points as the Internet and see how fast it is then. I am confident it will still be very impressive, and given those numbers we would all be amazed. Yay theory!

  60. What's even faster is.. by Frank+of+Earth · · Score: 2, Funny

    .. how fast Al Gore will take credit for inventing the Internet2 also.

  61. and more importantly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the design of the ARPAnet was never intended for what it is used for now. That is a testament to the robust nature of the design they used, but is also an indicator that we should not so easily fall into the '640 outta be enough for anyone' mentality. The fact is that our population is growing dramatically and will continue to do so. Lets design more pluggable friendly networks so that in the case that it gets bogged down in the near future we will simply throw another protocol on top (very loose example I realize) and not have to totally rewrite everything that directly or indirectly by up to 7 magnitudes depends on the old protocol.

  62. Some Calculations by Traa · · Score: 3, Informative

    The transfer rate of the new records calculates as follows: 625MB over 12,272km in 13 seconds = 590000 MB*Km/s = 0.590 TB*Km/s

    When I drive home from work in a few minutes: 125TB (10^15 Synapses, Von Neumann et al.) at 85 Mph during rush hour (yeah, that manic...it's me) = 4.7 Tb*Km/s

    The Boing full of DVD's calculates as follows: 4.7GB * 170.5 Cubic meters cargo space / 175 Cubic cm jewel case * 912 Km/h = 662,515Gb * 0.25Km/s = 1160 TB*Km/s

    1. Re:Some Calculations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, but say half way on the flight you realize a couple boxes of important data was left by accident. How much does it cost then? A better measure would be to compare the amount of data sent for x hours it takes to fly the distance. then again, physically moving may still be much cheaper.

    2. Re:Some Calculations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      400 passengers on Boeing = 12500 TB*km/s

  63. Even faster records: HDTV at 1.5Gbs by kalgen · · Score: 3, Informative

    The University of Washington has transmitted 1.5Gbps of HDTV across the country. I guess the new thing here is the intercontinental aspect. Here for the UW press release.

  64. What was the data they transferred? by qurob · · Score: 1


    Can you say the latest linux ISO's?

  65. Re:Netjunk. -- personal computers on the internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I didn't think they allowed personal computers on the internet2. I thought it was devoted to research and education. Things like live video feeds and research data.

    You may have the internet2 at your university, but I doubt you have it in your dorms or what-not.

  66. Please tell me.. by Crusty+Oldman · · Score: 1

    Please, please tell me it was a CD by Sting.

  67. Speaking of pr0n and religion... by ahaning · · Score: 1

    http://www.xxxchurch.com/ labels itself as "The number 1 christian pornography site."

    Yes, it's actually an antiporn site.

    Interesting approach, nonetheless.

    --
    Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
    1. Re:Speaking of pr0n and religion... by linzeal · · Score: 1

      Cool I just signed all the emails I could find on that site to gay porn, thanks I needed to be a bastard today and you provided the outlet.

  68. How fitting! by dimator · · Score: 2

    transferring the equivalent of an entire compact disc's contents across more than 7608 miles (12,272 km) of network in 13 seconds

    Fitting that the first ever use of the internet2 is piracy! I bet it was Eminemn's new cd...

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
    1. Re:How fitting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eminemn's new cd

      That little punk is still making "music"?

  69. Re:Senator Hollings Invented It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scary Thought! Better get involved before you need a .Hollings Passport.

  70. Australia by vchoy · · Score: 2

    From these previous articles, the way that major broadband providers down under managing - Telstra, Optus, General are capping Internet usage to 3GB per month! This equates roughly to six ISOs. This means that you could max out your traffic allowance in say 6 x 13s = 78 seconds!!!
    You could kiss broadband content eg. Streaming webcasts-music, demos, Telecommuting (ie Voip-video) goodbye!

    1. Re:Australia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With Telescum New Zealand they would cap you at 10 seconds and say that you are running a server.

    2. Re:Australia by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 1
      While we love to bash the telco's in Australia, you have to admit that they cannot afford to be too generous.

      A large percentage of Australian network traffic is to or from an overseas site, typically the US. That traffic goes over new international cables, which (IIRC) cost in the order of a Billion dollars or so to set up. Naturally the cable operators / investors want to recoup their investment. Similarly, the telcos have invested a packet in broadband infrastructure (including your cable modem), and they also need to pay dividends to their share holders.

      The thing that hurts domestic broadband users is that the telcos are currently trying to recoup investments from a relatively small customer base. Hence $A59 for 3GB per month. IMO, this is very short-sighted. Most potential customers will not bite at this price, so with fewer customers (suckers) the investment doesn't get paid off anyway.

      Interestingly, high bandwidth internet users in Australia who connect "directly" into a backbone have been slugged with high usage charges for years. Local traffic (within a capital city) is typically free, interstate traffic is at a low tariff, and overseas traffic is at a much higher tariff. The bill for DSTC (where I work) comes to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

      The fundamental problem is geography. It is a long way across the bottom of Pacific, and there are not enough people in Australia to spread the cost. Telecoms are always going to be relatively more expensive in Australia.

  71. How is this possible...? by PrimeWaveZ · · Score: 1

    How can a pipe like that exist in Fairbanks, AK when I can't even get frickin DSL in my house? Maybe it's a secret plan by Verizon to annoy customers...

  72. Re:so it is an equivalent of CD travelling at 944k by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you were transferring a 1mb file , that according to your calculation would travel at 12272km/second (more than). Which isn't true.

  73. Stop the greedy publishers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Free warez in just seconds from anywarez to anywarez!

    Information wants to be free!

  74. Of course by washirv · · Score: 2

    It doesn't matter at all how much faster than the average dialup modem they transfer data so long as there is still a user with a dialup modem at the other end of the transfer. I am not looking to belittle the fabulous work these folks have put in. Merely pointing out that until we solve the "last mile problem" these efforts are largely wasted.

    1. Re:Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My school has I2. They say that all traffic to I2 sites will be routed through it, but all I get is a 10Mbps ethernet connection. Wait, why am I complaining?

  75. Re:WOW!! Imagine the time I could save! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually look at the porn!

  76. Ouch...not good enough... by fehlschlag · · Score: 1

    ...yet another hardcore Amazon dead due to lag, this time because SHE couldn't keep up with THE SERVER.

  77. Data Powers of Ten by SeanAhern · · Score: 2
    If a LOC is 10 terabytes, then 700 megs (approximately), is about .00007 Libraries of Congress. (Don't get me started about bips and bits).

    The informaton that the LOC is 10 terabytes comes from the Data Powers of Ten page. Whether or not this is entirely accurate, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of reporters and such use it as a reference. They're probably good ballpark numbers. To quote a bit from the section of the page that includes the LOC:

    Terabyte (1 000 000 000 000 bytes)
    • 1 Terabyte: An automated tape robot OR All the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50000 trees made into paper and printed OR Daily rate of EOS data (1998)
    • 2 Terabytes: An academic research library OR A cabinet full of Exabyte tapes
    • 10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress
    • 50 Terabytes: The contents of a large Mass Storage System
    1. Re:Data Powers of Ten by OblongPlatypus · · Score: 2

      More accurately (and relevantly), the transfer rate of 401 megabits per second amounts to 0.00005 LOC/s, or 4.33 LOC/day. This is of course assuming the reference LOC size of 10 terabytes (not tebibytes).

      --
      -- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
  78. All joking aside.. by SideshowBob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    pr0n jokes aside :-)

    They really shouldn't be building up expectations in people's minds that "Internet2" is going to make things faster for them.

    These types of stories eventually wind up in the Tech section of the local newspapers etc. and its A Bad Thing TM to build up mis-perceptions.

    Internet2 is not going to solve last mile bandwidth limitations.

  79. Land Speed Record: This looks better by ashitaka · · Score: 1

    ThrustSSC.

    Too bad the original ThrustSSc site seems to have died.

    --
    If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
  80. Re:What's even faster is�� by colmore · · Score: 2

    I'm sick of this joke© It's based on a quote taken wildly out of context©

    IIRC, the quote actually is *about* Internet2, and Al Gore was one of the key figures in passing the bill that sponsored the Internet2 program©

    Gore was one of our more tech-savvy politicians, and we may have killed his presidency run with a dumb joke© ¥In a race that close, you can blame anything

    --
    In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
  81. New Zealand by phobonetik · · Score: 1

    Not to mention charge a couple of grand :P

  82. AMD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There was so much data passing, the mouse actually stopped responding for large periods of time.

    Maybe cause you used an el cheapo AMD processor :)

  83. S/Key by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Telnet can be somewhat secured. If someone sniffs my password all they are going to get as my password is "s/key" and a string of useless words after that...

  84. Isn't it fun? by be-fan · · Score: 2

    When something like this comes along and everybody gets to show their mad multiplication/division skills?

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  85. just think.. by EvilStein · · Score: 2

    if DoubleClick/etc just stopped with all of the Flash ads, the rest of the existing internet might be that fast. :-)

  86. 128000 Mbit , i.e. 128Gbit to reach speed of light by iamr00t · · Score: 1

    Not bad, considering there are at least 40Gbit commercial links.
    Another story is that it has to go through internet, not just link.
    And routing 128Gbit of traffic is not easy.
    Here's where Lambda router comes in play ;-)

  87. rtfm by kyras · · Score: 1

    People are posting about how 400Mbit/s is not that great considering that there are 10Gbit/s lines (or whatever) traversing the Atlantic. What you have to realize is:

    1) Lines are never as fast as advertised.

    2) Latency has a big effect on many congestion control algos. I assume that they were using some form of TCP for this transfer; if so, I'd like to know which variant (Reno/New Reno/Vegas/etc.) and whether they modified it.

    --
    Tastes like burning! - Ralph Wiggum
  88. Gay porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pray tell which!

  89. So what is the USPS baud rate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So what is the total baud rate of the USPS delivering AOL coasters?

  90. Re:Money Padding Al Gores Pocket Now Thats Fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some facts about the Silver Spoon son of a Senator who spent most of his time in Washington growing up and learning fron daddy how to lie and twist the truth so he could get what he wanted. Al Gore also learned how to pad his pocket along with Bill and supported the President when he recieved a blowjob from Monica in the Oval Office doing the Nations Business. Bill Clinton wagging his finger into the camera "I never had sex with Monica uh yeah it was just a blow job thats not sex". Al Gore did not invent the internet go talk to Vincent Cerf. Al Gores lets count all the chads and manufacture some votes made the whole world look at America and say I am glad I am over here and not over there look at those stupid Americans. Believe Al Gore then you must believe that Bill Gates invented 1's and 0's.

  91. No, the new thing is that TCP was used by kuknalim · · Score: 1

    The RTP-framing in the HDTV at 1.5Gbs transfer you describe indicates that UDP was the transport protocol used. What's new in the 401 Mbps result here is that TCP was used .

  92. Not impressed. by Wesley+Everest · · Score: 2
    If bandwidth is all you care about, you could beat that with a trebuchet and a station wagon full of DVDs.

    :)

  93. cost per bit by uncadonna · · Score: 2

    We've already established that FedEx wins on bandwidth, now what about cost per bit.

    For me to get time on the FedEx petabit jumbo jet costs what, $10E-10/bit? Now presume that internet 2 will have a hundred nodes, and will cost ten billion (optimistic on both counts) so about a hundred million per node or about ten million per node per year. So one second costs about 3 cents, and I get 0.4 gig for it presuming there is the demand for full utilization.

    So where is the scientific reason for spending a hundred times more per bit? If it's a big shipment, I can wait for the plane. If it's a small shipment, I can wait for good old internet 1. If it's interactive, I should fly myself to the computer that's doing the crunching or upload the code to my local platform. I have yet to see a legitimate scientific application for this. Maybe there's a futuristic entertainment angle to internet 2, but should NSF be funding ultra-luxury entertainment?

    Internet 2 is a solution looking for a problem.

    Or maybe sequelitis. "The first one was a hit, let's hurry up and get another one just like it out."

    Bah. I don't pay taxes so people can win pointless expensive races. Show me how this helps anything that is remotely in the public interest.

    --
    mt
    1. Re:cost per bit by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 1
      Internet 2 is a solution looking for a problem.

      Oh come on! The internet never has been the best way to send unimaginably large amounts information. It is about sending sensible amounts information fast. Internet 2 just increases the value of "sensible" by an order of magnitude.

      Internet 2 beats FedEx in latency hands down!

    2. Re:cost per bit by geekoid · · Score: 2

      shared processors.
      faster government computer processing
      VR from great distances. example: A chemist in alsake, can be doing real interacive moleculer worl in amsterdamn, on the fly with other chemest from around the world.
      Your inability to see what benefit can come from this is your lack of imagination.
      Blue sky research is one of many valuable process need to get things that improve our lives.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    3. Re:cost per bit by uncadonna · · Score: 2

      Hmm. If it's a mere order of magnitude, why can't the actual real internet scale up?

      Anyway, in which real-world instance does the delay of ftping or FedExing data have sufficient incremental costs that justify even the operating expense of internet 2, which is to generously presume that it actually ends up in substantial use rather than as an expensive empty pipe. (Waxahatchie anyone?)

      Here's another way to look at it. If I'm running a research institution researching anything but internet 2 itself, why would I prefer an internet 2 node to the gigantic computing cluster I could afford instead right onsite?

      A sensible cost-benefit analysis would have to prove that the cost of generating the bits remotely and then shipping them is substantially less than the cost of generating them locally.

      If compute power gets cheaper faster than bandwidth, and since computers are pretty much indifferent to where they are located, I can't see how to formulate a sensible argument in that vein.

      Why should I pay more for the pipe than the guy on the other end paid for his computer that I'm borrowing?

      The only way this makes sense is if bandwidth is cheap and compute power is scarce. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to me wrong on both counts.

      --
      mt
    4. Re:cost per bit by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 1
      Hmm. If it's a mere order of magnitude, why can't the actual real internet scale up?

      The current internet can't simply scale up by an order of magnitude (or two) because communications technology does not work like that. You simply can't make a network switch run 10 times faster by winding up the clock rate. Same for network protocols.

      Think of Internet 2 is a vehicle for doing research into networks, protocols and the next generation of communication intensive applications. Things that are the forerunners of the technology that will be used in 3 to 5 years time.

      If compute power gets cheaper faster than bandwidth, and since computers are pretty much indifferent to where they are located, I can't see how to formulate a sensible argument in that vein.

      Your premise is unrealistic, IMO.

      Top end compute engines will always be vastly more expensive than your average university research group can afford to buy out-right. There are many, R e.g. movies on demand, net videophones, VR, simulations, etc.

  94. You know what's really sad... by chriskenrick · · Score: 1

    This was announceed on one of the Debian mailing lists with a subject of "Debian Woody in less than two minutes". Until I read the mail, I thought that meant that they were just about to release it as stable. Debian deciding to actually release is far bigger news than some Internet speed record.

    1. Re:You know what's really sad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I too thought they were talking about the release of the elusive "Woody". I got excited about it then reality hit home...

      sigh......

      I pine for woody.

  95. internet2? by Punto · · Score: 2

    what speeds would they get if they used ipv4 with public internet ips to transfer data over these wires? why do they attribute this to 'internet2', and not just a fat pipe?

    --

    --
    Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!

  96. They've done faster... by gowdy · · Score: 1

    I heard today about a 17hour long rate of 850Mb/s from Washington state to Brussels. Not quite as far but twice as fast. It was using some mix of TCP and UDP to avoid TCP reduction due to lost packets.

  97. DL's great, but U/L is a real bitch! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, let's see, an Australian could exceed their monthly cap in just over a minute :-)

    Besides, they may get 401 megabits per second* down, but I bet they only get 128 kilobits per second up! Hee hee :-)

    *data rates not guaranteed. Actual download speeds may vary due to network conditions, your computer, and the local university down the street that hacked their Internet2 widget to give them a shitload more bandwidth for free and max out the local loop.

    PS:Is it just me, or did slashdot ads get a LOT bigger all of the sudden?

  98. To paraphrase MST3K by Ziktar · · Score: 1

    Amster-Damn that's fast!

  99. Not so fast! by GMontag · · Score: 2

    Ahem, I use a Quantum dialup connection with instantanious unlimited bandwidth communications to the Illuminati.

    Check with Dr. Erich von Daniken for technical details.

  100. great news... who cares?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All I can say is so what. The government sends its spy pictures of Iraq over sattelite a whole lot faster than that. We're walking gigabytes/second.

  101. !(FUNNY)?...i went that route... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    yes(true), i was tasked to measure the speed of light using a piece of equipment that was 1000 times too slow, or needed 1000 samples to attain the accuracy needed. It was for a mapping system i designed, and due to 'the boss' wanting to use radio waves(speed of light), he wanted to clock the waves and get telemetry.
    After trying to explain for the tenth time, i just built the fscking thing anyway. And lo and behold, it didn't work, but because a minor detail of how a chip had a swept freq. response, i got reamed.
    After the eleventh time, we went to sonar telemetry, waaaay easier to time.
    Moral of the story-they sure as hell didn't use sonar ;)(741 mph @ sea level, for you precision freaks), although if they could packet 1,000,000 sound waves together, without losing integrity, it could be done.
    ya riiight!

  102. I thought I was doing good to get 5.3 MBytes/sec by Megane · · Score: 2
    My own personal speed record is downloading from the Apache server on the internal drive of my G3 Powerbook (Pismo), via a Cisco 2924M switch, into my DivX-playing Athlon box. It's only half that fast with a 7200RPM Firewire drive, so there is obviously some limit in the FW link. It takes aIEeeee! longer to copy the downloaded file out of the temp directory than it did to download it.

    Before I tried using Apache, I was only getting a third of that (13 Mb/sec). Anyhow, 50 Mbits/sec vs 420 Gbits/sec... you figure it out. Me, I'll just drool for the drive arrays that ran fast enough to keep up with the link.

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  103. Re:that's fast, Imagine what they could do with by geekster_2000 · · Score: 1

    some fast memory like volume holographic optical
    storage nanotechnology being developed by good
    ole Bell Labs/Lucent and others.

  104. bicycle , with basket full of 5 inch floppies... by sixSecondsOfDefeat · · Score: 1

    or concord Jet full of IBM IDE drives....? well, if i factored in reliability, my vote would go with the bicycle.

  105. i can beat that. by sixSecondsOfDefeat · · Score: 1

    i wonder how fast is the thoroughput on my tin cup with string method.. of course thats not transmitting data, but i could build a modem for it.

  106. Why is this special? by wedg · · Score: 2

    I may be mistaken, but I thought I read about an OC-768 test by Qwest across the continental U.S. earlier on /. - so why is this different? OC-768 is about 40Gb/s, which is a lot faster than 401Mb/s.

    --
    Jake
    Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
  107. Error in formula: "length of your station wagon" by kievit · · Score: 1
    When you have a data connection between A and B and you want to know the speed in bytes per second, then you send a big amount of data and divide the data size by the time it takes to get from A to B.

    The first part of the formula:

    ( WV / (TW * TL * TH ) ) * TC
    calculates the data size. The time it takes from A to B is
    DD / WS
    where DD is the distance between A and B, not the length of the stationwagon!. Hence the correct formula for the station wagon band width is
    BW = (( WV / (TW * TL * TH ) ) * TC * WS / DD)
    and for the typical distance of the main story (and a Subaru is not amphibious, so let's take Wladiwostok & Lisbon instead of Alaska & Amsterdam for A & B) DD is 1684210 times longer than WL and the number for BW shrinks to 7.7 Gb/s which is still way higher than the number achieved with internet2 & SURFnet but not as impressive as Bonboard's 13 Petabyte/s.

    Of course the distance between A and B plays a dirty role in these calculations. If you send your data optically to Alpha Centauri then it does not matter much if your emitter throws them with 1Gb/s into the ether or with 56kb/s, the transfer time is basically determined by the travel speed (speed o' lite), while for terrestrial internet only the number of intermediate switches is relevant (unless we start talking about very small amounts of data, less than a few kilobyte, say).

  108. Damn by kraf · · Score: 2, Funny

    With the Internet2 I could download those looped Scorpion King trailers disguised as AOTC 8000 times faster !

  109. You guys sure have a short memory... by bedessen · · Score: 1

    It wasn't but a few months ago (3/25/2002 as reported by this story) that Bell Labs/Lucent demonstrated 2.56 Tb/s over 4000km, compared to this story's 401 Mb/s over 12300km -- about six thousand times as much bandwidth. While 401 Mb/s is pretty fast, its really not that great as far as these things go.

  110. and the Killer App is... by denttford · · Score: 1

    Personal Teleportation? A whole new meaning to network traffic...

    --

    Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
  111. Simple TCP Can't Do This! by billstewart · · Score: 2

    Any idea what software they used for the transfer? A simple TCP session won't work - the maximum window size of 64KB limits the transfer rate over large speed*delay products. Were they using a multi-session FTP, or customware, or something UDP-based?

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
    1. Re:Simple TCP Can't Do This! by shallot · · Score: 1

      TCP window size is variable.

  112. Why is this news? by treat · · Score: 2

    Why is this news? It is easy to get a gigabit link between any two major cities in the US, if you are willing to pay. I transfer files at gigabit speeds all the time - granted, across a river and not across an ocean, but is it really any different?

  113. yes telnet, dumbass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I ran telnet over the internet to connect to remote systems for 10 years. Only in the last few months did the last account that was telnet-only switch to requiring ssh. How many times was I hacked? 0. Never.

  114. Typo alert! by DarklordJonnyDigital · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't that be LAN speed record?

  115. Microsoft already beat this figure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft already did 957 megabits per second on Internet2 2 years ago...

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?ur l= / ibrary/en-us/dnw2k/html/speedtrial.asp

  116. DAmn uRL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the bit after the question mark is wrong. obviously the word is library and there are no spaces

  117. Equivalent? by shawnmelliott · · Score: 2

    "...the equivalent of an entire compact disc's contents"

    What? Was the rest marked out with a Sharpie marker?

  118. NO Error in the formula by JiffyPop · · Score: 1

    You'll fail your networks class with math like that..

    You have missed some of the subtler points of the calculation. We are measuring the bandwidth of the wagon, not the transfer rate achieved by one trip with one wagon between two arbitrary points. For comparison, by your calculations the bandwidth of a piece of wire or hunk of fiber would vary depending upon its length. This is obviously false. (neglecting any signal degredation, of course)

    Of course, sustaining a 13 petabyte per second transfer would require that you have a fleet of station wagons running bumper-to-bumper down the freeway...

    1. Re:NO Error in the formula by AaronStJ · · Score: 2
      Of course, sustaining a 13 petabyte per second transfer would require that you have a fleet of station wagons running bumper-to-bumper down the freeway...

      Correct. The calculations were done assuming this (that the highway was packed with station wagons). So while the lag is incredible, you still get amazing bandwidth.
      --
      Stupid like a fox!
    2. Re:NO Error in the formula by kievit · · Score: 1
      You'll fail your networks class with math like that..

      Fortunately I'm not a CS student, but a physicist!

      You have missed some of the subtler points of the calculation. We are measuring the bandwidth of the wagon, not the transfer rate

      Thanks! As an internet user (not a networking engineer) the most interesting quantity for me is the transfer rate rather than the bandwidth (in their proper definitions), I guess that is what made me (erroneously) equivalence these concepts. High transfer rate is the goal, high bandwidth is one of the requirements.

  119. Damn! by Jonny+Balls · · Score: 2, Funny

    Thats faster than Yo mama chasing after crack

    --
    --JonnyBlog
  120. And we're still going to have rate limits... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... Then they did the same test using attbi and it took 3 days thanks to the artificial rate caps...

    Broadband should be BROAD.

  121. Imagination? by uncadonna · · Score: 2

    Actually, I can imagine better uses for the money and talent being thrown at this project for no discernible reason.

    --
    mt
  122. 600MB in 13 seconds.. sounds crappy to me. by wackybrit · · Score: 1

    Okay, yes, it's faster than a regular modem, but surely backbones are pumping more data around than this already, even if it's spread out a bit.

    Some ISPs have hundreds of thousands of users online at any one time, and if half of them are using broadband.. you're looking at Gbps of bandwidth.

    Not only that, but fiber optics have the capacity to carry far more than this.

    I thought Internet2 was meant to be 'super'.. this doesn't sound too far off what the best regular Internet stuff is doing already.

  123. Another Simpsons Quote, Paraphrased by some+guy+I+know · · Score: 1

    13 seconds?
    But I want it now!

    --
    Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
  124. Yes, it's variable, and the max is 64KB by billstewart · · Score: 1

    TCP windows get up to 64KB - that's the most you can have outstanding waiting for ACKs, because that's all the bits the header has room for. Typical windows are more like 2KB-8KB. The problem, for long-haul data connections, is that the size of the window times the transmission latency is the maximum rate you can transmit data. So if you have a satellite with a 0.5 second round-trip time (roughly) and a 64KB TCP window, your maximum speed is 128KB/sec, aka 1024 kbps, which doesn't fill a T1. If you've got a 10000-mile round-trip (Alaska to NL is probably farther than that) the speed-of-light limit on RTT is about 100ms, so you're limited to about 5Mbps/sec. These guys went a lot faster than that, so they were clearly doing something intelligent, like keeping multiple TCP windows open, or using UDP with applications that do their own ACKs.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  125. Re:cost per bit (arggh) by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 1

    What I was trying to say ...

    ... is that there will always be top end
    compution engines that you cannot afford to
    buy ... even if you saved all of that money
    by using a 56k modem instead of Internet 2.
    And there will alway be researchers who need
    orders of magnitude more compute cycles than
    they can afford to buy out-right.