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New Internet Speed Record

Himanshu writes "Researchers have set a new data transmission record over the Internet2's high-speed backbone. The new record announced Tuesday at the Spring 2004 Internet2 member meeting in Arlington, Va., was for transmitting data over nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. This is nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The network link used to set the record spans from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland."

10 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why cannot the Internet be one giant LAN. Why do we have to have differemt speed networks, depending upon how much you can pay?

    That way we could all have a 100mbps internet connection.

  2. umm how does it work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    well it's great that i can download so fast.. but current storage units can't write and read so fast right? I mean looking at the standard 7200 rpm disk which write and read at say, 100MB/s, how would the disk handle the download speeds? And surely we can't jam everything in memory???

  3. Or more accurately by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The network link used to set the record spans from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland

    In other words, 2 of the, what, 1000?, 2000?, 10000? nodes on internet2 have exchange data super-fast.

    Well okay, but I'm sure if you reduce the number of internet1-connected computers to the same number, you'll get really really good results too.

    Comparing a semi-experimental network to a mature, heavily used one, is like comparing apples and oranges, and therefore I smell marketting under this speed record announcement.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  4. Re:Speed is nice... by igrp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hmm, I don't think anyone is seriously contemplating using high-speed equipment like this in a SoHo environment. We're rather talking backbone infrastructure. And, when you're dealing with backbone setups you simply cannot have enough bandwidth. These days, the limiting factor isn't actually technology - it's money.

  5. Re:How long until broadband speeds up for mainstre by AndyRobinson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    10Mbit/sec Ethernet has been around since, what, 1980 and is still 20 times faster than my ADSL line, so I expect we'll all be flying around in our personal jet packs first...

  6. what a NOT in-depth article by fred+fleenblat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how did they do this? fiber optic? satellite? quantum singlarity?
    who paid for this? government grants? private sponsorship? ice weasels?
    who benefits from this? physics professors? lonely college students? pay per view movie download web sites?
    can this technology be brought to individuals and businesses? yes? no? maybe?
    what crappy reporting on such an interesting topic.

  7. Not for home by phorm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You won't see this in a home connection anytime soon, but you might see it within networks or between other backbones.

    In the end, it can directly benefit the home user due to the fact that the overall bandwidth is increased, meaning that you and everyone on a backbone don't get bogged down by the 50% that are downloading/spamming/etc at higher-than-average speeds.

  8. Re:I just hope this never gets to Joe User. by dAzED1 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    oh yeah, definatelyinsightful parent post...

    Except for the fact that for Joe User in his home right now, their net connection is slower than a 10baseT. There are 10Gb nics now, which means that Joe User is already 8,000 slower than what is going into server rooms at present (assuming a broadband connect). Also ignore the fact that the speeds discussed in this article exceed the bus capability for anything on the comsumer market right now - Joe User is far from having anything 1/500 this speed for a long time. Which is fine, because he doesn't need to be able to download every movie ever made in just moments...

    Not now, at least...wait a few years until the increased pipe gets filled with more interesting stuff.

  9. Whoop-de-shit by b00m3rang · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why post this as an "Internet speed record" when obviously this is not the same thing as an Internet2 speed record. I'm much less impressed with the speed of some semi-private network that most of us will never have anything to do with. Speed up the Internet for the rest of us, and you'll have story.

  10. nice speed by KiDas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's crazy to think that the speed they are getting of approx. 800 MB per sec transfering from LA to Europe is faster than the effective bandwith of PC133 RAM to the CPU.

    The majority of the computers in this world are probably using PC133 RAM.

    kd

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