Researcher Only High Bandwidth Network

Icarus1919 writes "A brand-new 10 gigabit per second per user optical fiber network is now available to researchers in the U.S. (compared to Internet2, which offers only 10 gigabits of bandwidth total, regardless of the number of users). The National Lambda Rail, as it is known, is named for the 40 different wavelengths of light it uses to send data within the fiber network. In the past, researchers have complained about the relatively (relative when you're dealing with terabytes of data) small bandwidth they can access to send data, and the addition of the NLR will most likely be a boon to research."

Comments

This is progress

[shaneh0]

You may remember that the "internet 1" was a researcher-only network once and we all know how that turned out.

With even more competition now that the Electric companies can offer broadband service I think we'll see a Moores-law type situation in Telecom (albeit with a longer cycle then 18 months). With networks like this serving as a proving ground for new technology I think we'll see a speed-race among providers. Americans love Horsepower, RPM, GhZ, and they may not know it yet but Mb/s. Shane