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8.6 GB Internet?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sure-why-not dept.

prostoalex writes "Caltech computer scientists announced the protocol, capable of delivering 8,609 Mbps over the Internet, using 10 simultaneous flows of data. The research project was conducted in partnership with CERN, DataTAG, StarLight, Cisco, and Level 3. The practical applications, according to the press release, is ability 'to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds'. There is a number of papers and scientific publications available."

24 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. watch out! by rehabdoll · · Score: 5, Funny

    CERN, DataTAG, StarLight & Cisco - watch out! MPAA is coming for you!

    1. Re:watch out! by Anonymous+Struct · · Score: 5, Funny

      Soon they'll just be estimating the cost in lost sales at 'All the Money in the World' each year. If they were smart, they'd just start making their movies eight thousand times longer, and then it'd be like old times again.

      "Back... and to the left... back... and to the left... back....... and to the left..."

  2. Argh! 8Gb by addaon · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a dream. Some day the editors will learn the difference between a bit and a byte. Or I'll byte a bit of their heads off. [grumble]

    --

    I've had this sig for three days.
    1. Re:Argh! 8Gb by addaon · · Score: 5, Informative

      More nitpicking, yay! (a) If we assume base 10, it's actually ~0.9031 (log[10](8)) orders of magnitude off, as this is a logarithmic measure; (b) why are we assuming base 10? Base 2, which makes a lot more sense for this thing, gives us an even three orders of magnitude off; as a comment below mentioned, octal gives exactly one.

      --

      I've had this sig for three days.
    2. Re:Argh! 8Gb by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      why are we assuming base 10?

      Because we're humans speaking English. The assumption when humans speak english is that all numbers are base 10 positive whole numbers, unless otherwise noted.

    3. Re:Argh! 8Gb by Tower · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >Actually, it is precisely off by a factor of 8, as is always the difference between B versus b

      Ah, but it isn't! More and more often, there is a direct 10x correlation. Serial ATA, Serial Attached SCSI, Fiber (Fibre) Channel all use 8b/10b encoding, so each 8 bit byte takes up 10 bits on the wire (or equivalent medium). Hence, on a 1Gbps link, the max transfer rate is 100MB/s.

      Of course, if you have a trinary computer, the algorithms may have to be adjusted slightly...

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
  3. CalTech by Ken@WearableTech · · Score: 5, Funny


    CalTech's Motto: Enabling Faster Porn and Slashdoting Through Technology

    Bless those people :-)

    1. Re:CalTech by ccnull · · Score: 5, Informative

      10Gbps Ethernet already exists.

      The problem is that the fastest hard drives on the market today are Ultra320 SCSI, which have a throughput of 320MB per sec... or about 2.5Gbps. Even that's theoretical, of course. And few people have an all Ultra320 datacenter.

      Just pointing out that the cabling is hardly the bottleneck when you reach that kind of speed, even at the LAN level. I've seen so many people upgrade their switches to gigabit ethernet then scratch their heads wondering why the network is still slow... when the server in the closet hasn't been upgraded in 5 years. Storage will continue to be the bottleneck on the LAN for a long time to come.

      --
      filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
  4. A full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds by Faust7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't help but be amused that that was their first measurement standard for it.

    Oh, they meant legit full-length DVD movies...

    --
    The coolest voice ever.
  5. That sound you hear by KilljoyAZ · · Score: 5, Funny

    is Jack Valenti having an aneurysm.

    --
    This .sig is currently on hiatus for retooling.
  6. Give me units I can understand! by Lieutenant_Dan · · Score: 5, Funny

    How many Libraries of Congress per hour is that?

    --
    Wearing pants should always be optional.
  7. How long will it take for hard drives to catch up? by magnum3065 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While this is pretty cool theoretically, current hard drives don't even come close to handling this kind of bandwidth, so there isn't much use for this until we can actually manage to store the data fast enough to keep up with the connection.

  8. Five Seconds? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Funny
    "...ability 'to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds'



    Five seconds?? Ohhhh... but I want it NOW!

  9. Bottleneck by dalutong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is, what sort of mass storage device can write at 8.6 gigabits/sec?

    --

    What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    1. Re:Bottleneck by jelle · · Score: 5, Funny


      Well, /dev/null comes to mind.

      --
      --- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
    2. Re:Bottleneck by Emil+S+Hansen · · Score: 5, Informative
      Assumin its actually 8.6 bytes/sec and not bits like another poster suggested, the pci bus would become oversaturated since it can only transfer 3.2 gb/sec ( correct me if the transfer rate is wrong).

      A 33 MHz/32 bit PCI bus which is standard in most PCs will transfer 133 MB/sec.
      A 66 MHz/32 bit PCI bus which is in quite a few Intel and UNIX servers will transfer 266 MB/sec.
      A 66 MHz/64 bit PCI bus which also is quite common in UNIX servers (and becomming in Intel) will transfer 532 MB/sec.
      A 133 MHz/64 bit PCI bus which is the current standard for big UNIX servers will transfer, you guessed it, 1 GB/sec.
      Mind you that these numbers are pr. PCI bus, some of the lager Intel servers, and most UNIX servers have more than one PCI bus.

      --
      Will work for bandwidth!
  10. HDD Speeds? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Okay, todays RAM can top 8GB/s, so there is no problem generating data and sending it through this like that. However, hard drives can't even reach 1/100th of this speed, so don't expect your p2p programs to go much faster ;) This can be great for sites that require a massive pipe and have fiber hard drives's or ISPs. Also be good defence against a slashdotting ;)

  11. Overhead by yerricde · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is just over a gig a second.

    Not all of that is data. Some is packet headers. Some is error correction. That's why you can't push 6 KB per second over a v.90 dial-up connection at 48 kbps.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  12. Someday even MPAA will see the commerical benfit by linux11 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I imagine that there will be a day when you can get ANY movie regardless of popularity from Blockbuster, Best Buy or Circuit City easier than filling out a prescription. You just tell them what legacy movie or TV show episodes you want and 15 minutes later your burned DVD with professional looking label printed on it is ready for pick-up for $20-$30. It may even include a difficult to replicate vendor hologram on the label side of the DVD to help distingish it from non-approved burns.

  13. Re:How long will it take for hard drives to catch by MyGirlFriendsBroken · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who needs hard disk capacity if you can stream a movie in realtime?

    Why would anybody want to watch an entire movie in 5 seconds, certainly my ability to absorb information is not as good as that and I regard it to be rather high(Toung in cheek).

    --
    If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
  14. How to pronounce it.. by holyrabbitear · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the article: The protocol is called FAST, standing for Fast Active queue management Scalable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
    That would be FAQMSTCP..in other words pronounced
    FAH Q MS TCP...

    as read on FARK...

  15. Already started... by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...ever see Contact?

  16. So what? by jeffasselin · · Score: 5, Insightful
    No really. That's too fast. A full-length movie would be 2 hours. Why would you need to download it in 5 seconds? It will take you 2 hours to watch ANYWAY. So if you can stream it in a reasonable amount of time (like 2 hours) that would still be nice.

    And I won't add the problem of hard drive speeds which can't handle it. Of course, big RAID arrays and the like can, but not consumer drives.

    Of course, eventually, when we use a better quality encoding method for video/audio, the datarate may have to increase, but right now, it's useless.

    --
    If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
  17. I see two things... by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, they said it uses 10 parallel data streams. So any given stream is only running ~860Mbps. Could this be a resurgence of parallel commucations? For example, 10 cheap 100Mbps LAN transcievers integrated into 1 card for Gigabit Ethernet speed? Would there be any cost advantages of cramming large numbers of cheap devices onto a card VS a single fast but expensive device? Sort of like Billion-Dollar-Probes vs the smaller/faster/cheaper thing at NASA.

    And I figure that by the time this becomes mainstream, the amount of data needing to be transferred will also have increased by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude, and you'll still be stuck waiting hours for the latest HoloVideo downloads. Just like you wait hours to download Attack of the Clones over DSL and Cable, and like you once waited hours to download that 5 meg shareware program over your 56K modem.

    Seems like the amount of data being stored is always 1 step ahead of the amount that can be conveniently transferred... We need a war on program bloat.