Slashdot Mirror
Net Speed Record Smashed
BrianWCarver writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists have set a new internet speed record by transferring 6.7 gigabytes of data (the equivalent of 4 hours of DVD-quality movies) across 10,978 kilometres (6,800 miles), from Sunnyvale in the US to Amsterdam in Holland, in less than one minute. Average speed: more than 923 megabits per second, or more than 3,500 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The data was sent across the Internet2 network. Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Slac) Computer Services participated in the record-breaking event. Slac has an interest in such high-speed transfers as they have accumulated the largest known database in the world, which grows at one terabyte per day."
So how many LOC's/hour is that?! ;)
If I have anything to do with it my broadband will NOT be 3500 times slower.....I'm moving to amsterdam!
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
I'd like to know what media they used that could write that much information in 1 minute.
You just got to love how all internet trafic of today is measured in movies. ;)
It doesn't mention in the article. I remember seeing a couple of times that some Debian stuff was sent for these types of experiements.
But in the absence of real evidence, I prefer to make things up.
They sent pr0n.
ahh, it actually was 4 hours of DVD-quality movies...
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
The best part is since internet2 is a private network, no mainstream users are going to benefit from it's incredible speed. Hooray!
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
They transferred all this data over Internet2 and the writeup says "...set a new internet speed record ...". Isn't that cheating?
That's like saying "Our new car can go 6000 mph! (on a conveyer belt moving at 5950 mph).
Tommorrows headline on slashdot?
If they are using that much bandwidth they must be pirating something.
What the article doesn't mention (and it's a virtual clone of SLAC's press release) is this is part of the Internet2 Land Speed Record competition. SLAC (working with a few others) holds both the previous record and the new one.
For those wondering what the hell SLAC is, it stands for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Apparently, the SLAC library (SPIRES) stores pretty much every particle physics experiment data and write-up ever.
Here is the pretty picture and their about page.
I've said that no transmission method of bandwidth will ever exceed, in my lifetime, the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes.
"A simple calculation will make this point clear. An industry standard 8mm video tape (e.g. Exabyte) can hold 7 Gigabytes. a box 50x50x50 cm can hold about 1000 of these tapes, for a total apacity of 7000 Gigabytes. A box of tapes can be delivered anywhere in the US in 24 hours by Federal Express and other companies. The ffective bandwidth of this transmission is 56,000 gigabits/86400 sec or 648 Gbps, which is 1000 times better than the high-speed version of ATM (622 Mbps). If the destination if only an hour away by road, the bandwidth is increased to over 15Gbps."
-- A. Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks, Third Edition"
Yes, OC192 is faster, but I've never heard of a single computer being able to push that much data that fast over a single connection.
A few years ago SGI did a test where they leased a piece of cross-country dark fibre for a day and ran GSN over it. That's a single connection-- using ST, not TCP-- from one computer to another computer, RAM to RAM. They pegged over 790 MB/s (that's a big B, as in megabytes per second), and sustained it for hours. And, just to reiterate, this was from one computer to another computer, without any fancy-schmancy multiplexing or anything. This was the ST equivalent of a single FTP transfer.
I can't find any documentation of this test on the web, but I saw it with mine own eyes. One end of the connection was in Herndon, VA, (where I was) and the other was out west someplace.
The SLAC test did 900+ Mb/s over a switched network, which is darned impressive. It's undoubtedly a record for a public switched connection. But don't go thinking it's an absolute land speed record or anything like that.
I write in my journal
Namaste
It's a lot of data, and it's a fast network. But it's manageable as local I/O.
In special effects work each frame is handled as an uncompressed TIFF at high res (I can't remember the exact bit depth and res). Previewing sequences means streaming these TIFF images. Adds up to about 400MB/s sustained (that's byte, not bit). HD video at 720p has similar requirements -- don't forget, you musn't drop any frames, and it has to arrive on time.
I work in such an effects shop, and we've had several demos of HD-capable digital disk recorders over the last few months. Two out of three were based on Linux, and worked well (the other was custom). Twin Ultra 320 channels with software RAID across the two channels, XFS as a filesystem. They each did the job with a 2U enclosure full of largely stock components (except the video I/O board) -- and that's 3.2GBit/s I/O to the drive array.
Who's more likely to be stoned? Somebody in Amsterdam, or somebody in the bay area?
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Lesse...
10,978Km / c (speed of light) = (about) 0.0036 s
At least 3.6ms latency. Likley in the 5ms range tho, considering cut-through times and propegation delays.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
6.7 gigs? Ah! Now we know where that Longhorn beta was leaked.
Imagine, international internet gaming with low latencies all 'round. Sounds like a pipe dream.
Unfortunately, it is. The two farthest points around earth are 12,000 miles. Round trip means 24,000 miles. Speed of light is 186,000 miles / second. That means that, best theoretical case, round trip is 129 milliseconds. Of course, you'll never get close to the best theoretical case, particularly with wire, never mind routers, etc.
In the immortal words of John Carmack, "The Speed of Light Sucks".
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
In a joint press conference, Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti have announced that the MPAA and the RIAA will sue the designers and contructors of Internet2 for creating a network so fast that it will certainly create havoc in the movie and music industries.
"You can copy all of the Godfather movies in milliseconds!" Valenti shouted, slamming his fist upon the podium. "We're going to take THIS to the mattresses! To the MATTRESSES!"
Rosen added, somewhat more sedately, that the a user could log into an Internet2 account and download the "greatest hits library of Hansen" in less than five minutes. Rosen refused to comment when a reporter asked her how Internet2 was any different, that similar acts of piracy could be accomplished today using only a dialup modem.
Article here: http://chronicle.com/free/v45/i47/47a02101.htm.
You have to write that 7000 Gb to 1000 tapes first. That will take MUCH longer than 24 hours, since you are limited to the speed of your SCSI bus and the speed and capacity of your tape robot.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Why do people constantly talk about n-DVD-hours worth of data? Particularly since they are generally referring to DVD-Video, not DVD data.
Comparing the transfer capacity to some number of hours of DVD video material is pointless, since the bitrate is not the same from one title to the next.
For example, 6.7 gigabytes of data is actually only 6.23 gibibytes. A video stream would have to be encoded at around 3.5 mebibits/second to fit four hours of material in 6.23GiB. I wouldn't call that a quality video stream. And that's WITHOUT an audio sub-stream! You're not far away from Super VCD world at this bit rate.
Now, using a more reasonable average bitrate of, say, at least 4.5 mebibits would mean that the 6.23 gibibytes of data would only hold about 3 hours of "DVD-Video quality material".
Which brings us back to my point. Using DVD Video as a measure of data capacity is pointless, since there is no single data rate used for DVD Video.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
A sack full of 27 200GB hard disks (or 1200 DVD-Rs) sent on a twelve-hour flight would also equal the claimed 1 Gbit/sec transmission rate... A couple cargo pallets of hard disks would blow it away :).
:(
The ping time would be about 43200000ms though