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New Data Transmission Speed Record

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmag is reporting that a team of German and Japanese scientists have collaborated to shatter the world record for data transmission speed. From the article: "By transmitting a data signal at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160-kilometer link (equivalent to 2,560,000,000,000 bits per second or the contents of 60 DVDs) the researchers bettered the old record of 1.28 terabits per second held by a Japanese group. By comparison, the fastest high-speed links currently carry data at a maximum 40 Gbit/s, or around 50 times slower."

262 comments

  1. 2.56 Terabits = ? by mattydont · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anti-Slashdoting for a webhost.

    1. Re:2.56 Terabits = ? by bioteq · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not true, actually.

      Most slashdotting happens because of hardware issues, not upstream bandwidth.

      Although, 2tb of bandwidth would be freakin' amazing for some stuff for a botnet to get ahold of..

      Quick! Everyone call up the nearest script kiddie and get to work!

  2. Terabits per second!? by SillySnake · · Score: 4, Funny

    What kind of measurement is that? Why can't we use something everyone understands like u-haul trucks full of dvd's driving 100 kilometers per fortnight*10^(-6)?
    For the uninitiated, that's a microfortnight.

    1. Re:Terabits per second!? by onwardknave · · Score: 5, Funny

      A measurement everyone understands? Like how much porn?

    2. Re:Terabits per second!? by zerocool^ · · Score: 1, Funny


      Yeah, I want to know how fast that is in Libraries-Of-Congress-per-second.

      //40 rods to the hogshead...

      --
      sig?
    3. Re:Terabits per second!? by chris_eineke · · Score: 0

      Uh, what? Don't go all SI on my butt, young-un... can you put it in yards of libary-of-congresses per nano-fortnight-hour?

      --
      "All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
    4. Re:Terabits per second!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Especially since this was reported by Gizmag ;p

      Since new porn is being added to the net at more than 3 terabits per second, you could never download it all using this technology.

    5. Re:Terabits per second!? by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      I suspect we're getting close to a 747 full of CDs per second.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    6. Re:Terabits per second!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Since new porn is being added to the net at more than 3 terabits per second, you could never download it all using this technology.

      Maybe not, but I can damn well try.

    7. Re:Terabits per second!? by ttroutma · · Score: 1

      How about, GigaHour, for how many gigs a link might under ideal circumstances transfer in hour?
      For some reason this makes sense to me. Home users could then buy bandwidth in increments like 1 MegaMinute.

    8. Re:Terabits per second!? by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 1

      One Library of Congress per minute?

    9. Re:Terabits per second!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Units was only able to give me the number of uhaul trucks per second, good luck on the rest!

      me@myhost ~ $ units
      2086 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

      You have: 60 dvd
      You want: uhaultruck
                      * 0.00043478261
                      / 2300

      me@myhost ~ $ dc -e '11 k 60 .00043478261 * 2300 / p'

      Comes out to about .00001134215

    10. Re:Terabits per second!? by mcsporran · · Score: 1

      Shurely you mean:
      "u-haul trucks full of dvd's driving 497 furlongs per fortnight*10^(-6)?"

      And how many Firkins per U-haul ?

      --
      This is NOT a signature.
    11. Re:Terabits per second!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1.28 terabits a second is 1.28 million BitTorrent users downloading at 1mbit/sec.

      Unfortunately that's not going to be enough, as there are already more than 1.28 million BitTorrent users. Keep working on it guys.

    12. Re:Terabits per second!? by edgr · · Score: 1

      Or just figure that a truck driving at 100 km/hour would take about 1.6hours = 5760 seconds to make the trip. 5760 * 60 DVDs = your truck has to carry 345,600 DVDs. Of course if that doesn't fit on one truck it just means that you need that amount of capacity in total between all your trucks. That doesn't include loading time but I suspect their measurements didn't include the time to load data from a HD into the link, not at that speed. It most likely would have been cached.

    13. Re:Terabits per second!? by Nexcis · · Score: 1

      Hear Hear.

    14. Re:Terabits per second!? by Achoi77 · · Score: 2, Informative
      2.328306436539 LOC/s

      From Wikipedia:
      1 LOC = 20 tebibytes
      1 tebibyte = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

      Doesn't sound nearly as impresive, perhaps marketing should stick with 6,984,919,309 nLoc/hr

    15. Re:Terabits per second!? by Yinepuhotep · · Score: 1

      Would that be a Sahara-bit?

      --
      Gun control: The belief that a woman, raped and strangled with her panties, is morally superior to a dead rapist.
    16. Re:Terabits per second!? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Funny
      A measurement everyone understands? Like how much porn?

      Well, they did say 60 DVDs. So depending on your proclivities, that's ... what ...

      18 hours of phone sex ads + 720 'standard' sex scenes

      180,000 pop shots on compilation

      240 hours of midget porn

      6,000 discrete pee sequences

      No less than 100 gang-bang sequences

      500 bukkakke events

      600 different MILFs

      1 million or so jpeg images

      I mean, these are known measures. ;-)
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    17. Re:Terabits per second!? by vwjeff · · Score: 1

      A measurement everyone understands? Like how much porn?

      The summary said it. 60 DVDs per second. At that speed you could get every porn DVD ever made in about 3 years. When can I start?

    18. Re:Terabits per second!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      5,184,000 DVDs per day. Probably a matter of hours, not years.

    19. Re:Terabits per second!? by thesandtiger · · Score: 1

      Porn isn't measured in bytes, but in fucktons.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    20. Re:Terabits per second!? by StikyPad · · Score: 1

      A microfortnight?!? Are you insane??? You can't just combine metric and imperial measurements like that. Portions of a unit must be expressed in fractions whose denoninator is a power of 2. Everybody knows that. Jeeze. And I won't even ask wtf a "kilometer" is doing in your sentence.

    21. Re:Terabits per second!? by ZackSchil · · Score: 1

      Right. It's about a 98 Gigasnatch connection.

    22. Re:Terabits per second!? by toleraen · · Score: 1

      No, no, I think the GP got it right when they stated it would take years.

  3. Re:Digg Loses by imunfair · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Precisely why I read slashdot and fark, but not digg.

    Slashdot has the non-time sensitive, most interesting news - with insightful or interesting comments.

    Fark has the time sensitive or humorous news, with clever or funny comments.

    Digg is somewhere in the middle, with the immature comments or spam I can find in an AIM chat room if I need it.

  4. How much in terms of by anandpur · · Score: 2, Funny
    1. Re:How much in terms of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would say its approx 1 Lpm (Library of Congress / minute)

    2. Re:How much in terms of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about Truckloads of legal Linux CDs per nano-Windows boot?

  5. So, that's OC-What? by jcr · · Score: 0

    Someone have the conversion factor handy?

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:So, that's OC-What? by jcr · · Score: 1

      Ah, found it. This works out to approximately OC 49,382.

      Wow.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    2. Re:So, that's OC-What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OC-51782 rounding up to the nearest "OC" ;)

    3. Re:So, that's OC-What? by Afecks · · Score: 1

      OC-47095

    4. Re:So, that's OC-What? by heinousjay · · Score: 3, Funny

      Three different answers for what boils down to a grade school story problem. At least we know you three didn't cheat from each other.

      --
      Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
    5. Re:So, that's OC-What? by mmdoogie · · Score: 1

      It's "New Math."

      --mrm

    6. Re:So, that's OC-What? by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 1

      If we want to be technical, OC refers to a SONET rate transmitted on a single wavelength... and this record is using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to achieve this kind of transmission rate. So they could be using any type of OC they want and many wavelengths. I am figuring they must be using OC-768 or at very best, OC-3072. Don't forget that the speed of electronics is the limiting factor here!

      --
      DrkBr
  6. in libraries of congress please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are they constantly doing these useless laboratory speed tests that never mean anything in the real world?

    Hmm why is my turing test image "imbecile"...

    1. Re:in libraries of congress please by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Research scientists are always ahead of the "real world". This has always been, always will be. You can view their work as creating ideas, innovations and technologies. Once these ideas have been published, it is the industry's work to pick them up and transform them into something commercially usable. Yes, there is a lot of research projects that can be viewed as useless, but, you should see it as a brainstorming of new technologies. Not all will end up in something revolutionary, but it may incite new ideas and/or bring new products or ways of doing things in the "real world".

      --
      DrkBr
  7. Germans and Japanese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So they're working together again, huh? Well, as we all know, history tends to repeat itself. Now we know why the Homeland Security Agency wants to be able to create secret meetings on a whim.

  8. 60 DVDs per second by craXORjack · · Score: 4, Funny
    (equivalent to 2,560,000,000,000 bits per second or the contents of 60 DVDs)

    Wow, converting to MPAA units that's 300 years of jail time per second! Smokin!

    --
    Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
    1. Re:60 DVDs per second by bedroll · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, no, no... It's $37,500,000 per second. ($125,000 per infringement)

      Remember that the MPAA thinks in dollars.

    2. Re:60 DVDs per second by penguin-collective · · Score: 1

      And 120 years of jail time per second in metric units.

    3. Re:60 DVDs per second by bedroll · · Score: 1

      wtf? What am I smoking?

      125,000 * 60 = 7,500,000

    4. Re:60 DVDs per second by noidentity · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Wow, converting to MPAA units that's 300 years of jail time per second! Smokin!"

      Hmmm, I sense the possibility of time travel hidden in there somewhere.

    5. Re:60 DVDs per second by The_GURU_Stud · · Score: 1

      ROFL, you should get points for that!

    6. Re:60 DVDs per second by Dachannien · · Score: 1

      Remember that the MPAA thinks in dollars.

      I thought their metric was "technophobic single mothers cowering in fear per second".

    7. Re:60 DVDs per second by ortholattice · · Score: 1
      No, no, no... It's $37,500,000 per second. ($125,000 per infringement) Remember that the MPAA thinks in dollars.

      No, no, you're still not thinking like the **AAs. At 4MB each, we have 640000 MP3s per second. At $125,000 each, that's $80,000,000,000 per second, or about 1.6 Bill Gates per second (who was overheard to say that we'll never, ever need anything faster, since "640K infringements per second ought to be enough for anybody").

    8. Re:60 DVDs per second by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 1

      It depends, are those dvd's filled with ripped mp3s?

      It could get ugly REALLY quickly then.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    9. Re:60 DVDs per second by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ortholattice posted:
      words


      Hahah. Somebody give that man a medal.

    10. Re:60 DVDs per second by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 1

      You forgot that the rate is in Tbps TeraBITS per seconds... not bytes... so there is an 8 factor to take into consideration there!

      --
      DrkBr
    11. Re:60 DVDs per second by ortholattice · · Score: 1

      Yeah, yeah, I made a mistake. Off by a factor of 8. OK, let's severely compress those MP3's down to tinny sounding 500K each, so we can still make the 640K infringements per sec to keep the RIAA happy. That's what they would do to compute their "lost revenue", right?

  9. Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by b00m3rang · · Score: 3, Interesting

    and storage in KB? It's not like we measure radio waves in cycles per second and sound waves in cycles per 8 seconds. What's the advantage?

    1. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by blazer1024 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      One reason is because it's serial data generally, and you don't know exactly how many of those bits are going to be data.. (you could have start or stop bits, etc)... but I don't know the details of that, so I'll just mention my other possible reason.

      It's that throughput is generally what actually matters when sending data. In other words, that how much actual payload is being send, minus any overhead. If you've got a decent amount of overhead, your actual throughput might be a bit less. So it makes more sense to talk about bandwidth in bits per second, so as not to confuse it with actual throughput.

    2. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Firehed · · Score: 1
      Kilobits sounds faster to the masses, as the number is eight times bigger. My 4Mbit line sounds pretty pathetic when called the 512Kbyte line that it is. Of course, it would make a stronger case if it was an 8Mbit/1Mbyte line so the unit prefix is the same, but you get the idea.

      In short: marketing.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    3. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Tezkah · · Score: 1

      Mainly ISP marketing/competition, its much more impressive to offer an 8 megabit connection instead of a 1 megabyte connection... Joe User would pick 3Mb over 1MB because 3>1, even though the 1MB connection would be much faster.

    4. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bandwidth is derived from an analog concept of frequency. it makes sense that cycles per second = bits per second

    5. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by EvanED · · Score: 1


      My best guess is that it goes back to when networks were first being built and the size of a byte varied a lot more than today. Everyone agreed as to what a bit was, so it was a consistent measure, instead of some people saying a byte is 8 bits, others 11, others 9, etc.

      Then just the inertia of moving to a more sane unit, perhaps combined with the marketing ideas others mentioned.

      I don't know if that's the case, but it seems like a reasonable guess. I doubt it's solely marketspeak, because it's used all over the place in networking, not just promo stuff.

    6. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      probably because you are comparing transmission rate to storage capacity.

      Do you measure sound waves in cycles per second and the CD it is stored on in cycles per second?... I think not.

    7. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by b00m3rang · · Score: 1

      First off, that sentence doesn't even make sense. "Measure the CD in cycles per second"? What does that mean, exactly? And besides, it's not like there isn't a direct correlation between the two... 1KB will always equal 8Kb. Whether stored or transferred, a bit is a bit and a byte is a byte. First time, last time, every time.

    8. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by teknomage1 · · Score: 1

      I'm fairly certain you're confusing bytes and blocks or words. I think bytes have always been 8 bits.

      --
      Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
    9. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok, I just HAD to reply to this after seeing all the people who seem to think that this is done purely as an ISP marketing ploy. WRONG!

      When measuring the speed of data transmissions you have two factors, X and Y, data units and time. Most network links are serial data streams, meaning they can only transmit 1 bit at a time. This would make the unit of measurement on the X scale a single bit. The unit of time most people would use for the Y scale is 1 second. The speed of something is typically published in units per time, so in this case bits per second. Some data path ways are parrellel, moving one or more whole bytes (8 bits) at a time. In these cases it tends to make more sense to use bytes per second as there are actual full bytes being transmitted.

      Storage is measured in full bytes because that is how we use the space, because we read or write in whole 8 bit chunks at a time. Storage is parrellel, networks are (mostly) serial.

      If the concept of using bits or bytes for measurement was driven by marketing then don't you think hard drive manufacturers would use bits instead? That would always be a much larger number! But it's not marketing that determines which is used, bytes or bits, it's a matter of speaking in parrellel or serial data streams.

    10. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, no. From Wikipedia -
      "Byte: A contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits (binary digits). In recent years, the use of a byte to mean 8 bits is nearly ubiquitous."

    11. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by edwdig · · Score: 1

      Storage is measured in full bytes because that is how we use the space, because we read or write in whole 8 bit chunks at a time. Storage is parrellel, networks are (mostly) serial.

      No we don't. Disks the smallest addressable unit of a disk is a sector. On most hard disks, a sector is 512 bytes (some are moving to 4096 in the near future). CD sectors are 2352 bytes (before sectors).

      If the concept of using bits or bytes for measurement was driven by marketing then don't you think hard drive manufacturers would use bits instead? That would always be a much larger number! But it's not marketing that determines which is used, bytes or bits, it's a matter of speaking in parrellel or serial data streams.

      Hard disk size measurement is driven by marketing. That's why the sizes are measured using base 10 units rather than base 2. Considering that the size of a hard disk must be a multiple of 512 bytes, it makes a lot more sense to use base 2 measurements. However, base 10 results in larger numbers, hence it gets used.

      The most logical reason to use bits per second for raw bandwidth is because it is an unambiguous measurement. When you actually start to transmit data, you usually add in some combination of start, stop, and parity bits. These settings tend to be customized to suit the needs of the connection, and result in a different number of bits being necessary to transfer one byte. Think back to the old modem days when you'd have to set your modem to things like 8-N-1 or 7-E-1. Those settings change how many bits it takes to transfer one byte.

    12. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by EvanED · · Score: 4, Informative

      You think wrong. Some quotes from the Wikipedia entry:

      In recent years, the use of a byte to mean 8 bits is nearly ubiquitous

      Meaning even today it's not universal.

      A contiguous sequence of binary bits in a serial data stream, such as in modem or satellite communications, or from a disk-drive head, which is the smallest meaningful unit of data. These bytes might include start bits, stop bits, or parity bits, and thus could vary from 7 to 12 bits to contain a single 7-bit ASCII code.

      Here I think is the most revealing definition for the discussion in the present context.

      The eight-bit byte is often called an octet in formal contexts such as industry standards, as well as in networking and telecommunication, in order to avoid any confusion about the number of bits involved.

      Another site says that:

      * Pre-1965, and including the IBM 701, bytes were almost always 6 bits, though they weren't called that much then, but rather characters.

      * 9 bits were sometimes used

      * The PDP-6, PDP-10, and DECsystem 20 all supported changing the byte size with instructions from 1 to 36 bits (probably only some of those)

      The latter reference, looking up the PDP-10 on Wikipedia, gives this quote:

      Some aspects of the instruction set are still considered unsurpassed, most notably the "byte" instructions, which operated on arbitrary sized bit-fields (at that time a byte was not necessarily eight bits)

    13. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by m50d · · Score: 1

      Because if you measure an early modem's bandwidth in KB it sounds really really pathetic. It's just a marketing thing that's stuck, like how hard drives are measured in fake smaller GB (yeah, yeah, ISO, GiB, suck my balls) even though RAM and so on are in real GB.

      --
      I am trolling
    14. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No we don't. Disks the smallest addressable unit of a disk is a sector. On most hard disks, a sector is 512 bytes (some are moving to 4096 in the near future). CD sectors are 2352 bytes (before sectors).

      Yes we do! Sure, drive surface mapping may be done using 512 byte sectors, but the data is USED in 8 bit chunks called bytes. And when you perform reads and writes it is possible to do so with 1 byte at a time, regardless of the sector size of a device this is how the file system is used.

      Hard disk size measurement is driven by marketing. That's why the sizes are measured using base 10 units rather than base 2. Considering that the size of a hard disk must be a multiple of 512 bytes, it makes a lot more sense to use base 2 measurements. However, base 10 results in larger numbers, hence it gets used.

      Actually, the advertised drive size these days is technicaly smaller than the actual addressable space. For example, take this Western Digital 80GB IDE drive I have here. Advertised as 80GB yet I show a formatted (NTFS) capacity of 80,015,491,072 bytes. This is more than 80,000,000,000 correct? And this is formatted, which means the actual drive space is much larger but some of it has been taken by the NTFS tables. You are correct that there are several ways we can count "bytes" on the drive's surface. But as for the advertising end of things, the published sizes are fair.

      The most logical reason to use bits per second for raw bandwidth is because it is an unambiguous measurement.

      Well, this is a good reason, but my stated reasoning about how measurements are taken in the first place is the actual reason behind this. In the end it has nothing to do with accounting for overheard in protocol and every thing to do with how measurements are taken in the first place. If your measuring serial data streams then your unit size is bits, period.

    15. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by eraser.cpp · · Score: 1

      Bandwidth has always been measured like this (ie before it was turned into a product). The mathematics behind it translate immediately into bits. Also you'd be mistaken to assume all computer word sizes are 8 bits long.

    16. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      let's play spot the guy who's talking out of his butt... oh, its you!

    17. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A kilobyte is not eight times larger than a kibibyte, it is in fact, 24 bytes smaller... Know what you are talking about.

      In case you do not understand the GP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefixes

    18. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by fbjon · · Score: 1

      No, it's tradition, it's always been like this: block device (hd, cd, dvd) = bytes, streams of bits (serial port, dsl, ethernet, mp3's)= bits.

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
    19. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by fbjon · · Score: 1

      A byte has been 6 bytes on some systems in the distant past, and probably other variations too. If you want a guaranteed unambiguous term, use octet, as used in RFC's.

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
    20. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by joker784 · · Score: 1

      You are both wrong. Kb means "kilo bits", not bytes. For "kilo bytes" you write KB.

    21. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Detritus · · Score: 1

      A byte, or octet, is a higher-level concept. When you do the math for communications channels, you work with bits and symbols, not bytes. Also, the prefixes for units are proper SI prefixes, not the non-standard powers of 2 used in the computer industry.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
    22. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pedantry demands pedantry. To write "kilobytes", you write kB, not KB. A KB would be a "Kelvin-byte".

    23. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by mplex · · Score: 1

      One thing that measuring in bits makes easy is conversion between Mb and bits is on a power of 10 basis. 1000000bs is equal to 1Mbs instead of .95Mbs or so. For this reason alone I prefer it over a byte measurement.

    24. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by edwdig · · Score: 1

      Yes we do! Sure, drive surface mapping may be done using 512 byte sectors, but the data is USED in 8 bit chunks called bytes. And when you perform reads and writes it is possible to do so with 1 byte at a time, regardless of the sector size of a device this is how the file system is used.

      In your application code, yes, you can access one byte at a time. But the OS can't. If you request 1 byte, the OS reads 512 off the disk and gives you the first one. Likewise, if you write 1 byte, the OS has to read 512 off the disk, modify the 1 byte you want to change, then write all 512 back. Accessing 1 byte at a time is completely arbitrary. It's something common to do, but there is no reason inherent to how a disk drive works for it. You could say accessing 32 bits at once is just as natural. It doesn't make a difference to the hard drive, but most CPUs are optimized for accessing data of that size.

      Actually, the advertised drive size these days is technicaly smaller than the actual addressable space. For example, take this Western Digital 80GB IDE drive I have here. Advertised as 80GB yet I show a formatted (NTFS) capacity of 80,015,491,072 bytes. This is more than 80,000,000,000 correct? And this is formatted, which means the actual drive space is much larger but some of it has been taken by the NTFS tables. You are correct that there are several ways we can count "bytes" on the drive's surface. But as for the advertising end of things, the published sizes are fair.

      You completely missed what I was saying. 80 GB using base 2 units comes out to 85,899,345,920 bytes. Using base 2 units, your 80 GB hard disk is only 74.5 GB. Base 2 units make more sense, as your software and RAM use them for measurements, and the disk size inherently is based on a power of two. 80 GB gets put on the box though because it's a larger number.

      Also, the filesystem overhead is not subtracted from the capacity. It's subtracted from the free space. If you format a disk and don't put anything on it, you'll see there is already space used.

      Well, this is a good reason, but my stated reasoning about how measurements are taken in the first place is the actual reason behind this. In the end it has nothing to do with accounting for overheard in protocol and every thing to do with how measurements are taken in the first place. If your measuring serial data streams then your unit size is bits, period.

      You again missed the point. Your argument doesn't even make sense. If you ignore overhead, using bits versus bytes becomes a completely arbitrary distinction. If you're just going to get bytes by dividing by 8 every time, then it doesn't matter which units you use. There is no difference between 1 byte per second vs 8 bits per second unless you factor in the control bits. Arguing that would be like complaining someone gave a measurement in megabits instead of just bits. After all, you have to measure the bits one at a time. It's not like you know you transferred a megabit unless you're counting the bits along the way.

      Ever notice how modems were measured in baud rather than bps? A 2400 baud modem was capable of transmitting about 240 bytes per second. Note that's 1/10th the advertised speed. That would be 8 bits plus 1 start bit and 1 stop bit per byte transferred using the standard 8 bits per byte, no parity, 1 stop bit settings. 7 bits per byte, even parity, 1 stop bit also used to be common in the early text only BBS days. You had plenty of other options to choose from as well, but it was rare they were used.

      I stand by what I said. Bits are the unit used because it is a clear, precise measurement. If you used bytes, every measurement would have to have a paragraph qualifying how they were transmitted to be able to compare the numbers.

    25. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by Firehed · · Score: 1

      Duh. We're talking about kilobytes and kilobits though. You're confusing KiB/KB/Kib/Kb. Get your facts straight before trying to explain why my post is wrong. A KB is eight times bigger than a Kb. A KiB is 24 bytes bigger than a KB. Bandwidth is measured in Kilobits per second, transfer speeds on your screen are measured in Kilobytes per second. Only file sizes themselves are based off of the binary-byte (kibi-) system.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    26. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Base 2 units make more sense, as your software and RAM use them for measurements, and the disk size inherently is based on a power of two. 80 GB gets put on the box though because it's a larger number.

      No they don't. Using the same prefixes to mean the same things for distance, weight, volume, current, power, time, and most other derived units, and using the same one to mean something different for storage, data transmission rates, and binary addressable storage, especially when there's a valid alternative makes no sense at all.

    27. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by teknomage1 · · Score: 1

      I stand corrected, and thoroughly!

      --
      Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
    28. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Kind of like how you can give a kid five one-dollar bills and he'll be happier than if you gave him one hundred-dollar bill. If only we could explain this to bandwidth-consuming adults :D

      It is rather self-serving how companies will use one measurement over the other to mislead the customer (no matter how small the difference). Hard drives measuring in Gibibytes rather than Giga.. Sneaky HDD vendors, if you're selling a 200gb drive, make sure it shows up as 200gb in Windows so these idiot users can stop calling me a thief. The worst was when I built a file server for some bag of hammers (I think it was a law firm), and the 2.0tb raid array showed up as 1862 gb. Sure enough, they called me asking for 7% of the purchase price back because that's how much space was missing.. 2 hours later, with a car trip and a contract appendix full of math, everything was resolved. Fuck you Western Digital!

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    29. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by edwdig · · Score: 1

      No they don't. Using the same prefixes to mean the same things for distance, weight, volume, current, power, time, and most other derived units, and using the same one to mean something different for storage, data transmission rates, and binary addressable storage, especially when there's a valid alternative makes no sense at all.

      The computer world has used Kilobyte and the like to mean base 2 units from the beginning. Kibibyte and the like is fairly recent. Hard disk makers used base 10 units long before anyone considered creating seperate terms for base 2 units. You can attempt to use that as a justification now, but the original reasoning was very clearly to make the number sound bigger.

      Besides, the only people who actually use kibibyte and the like are pedantic Slashdot readers. You're not even going to find those terms used in textbooks.

    30. Re:Why is bandwidth measured in Kb by zopf · · Score: 1

      So we should measure throughput in Mortal Kombat terms... KOs!

      --
      Did you see the pool? They flipped the bitch!
  10. Actually it's 64 by mattite · · Score: 1

    According to the numbers given, the old record is exactly 64 times slower. Hmmm. About 50. Right. Even I'm not too lazy to use a calculator. Personally, I would have given a metric like DVDs per second (which in this case is a better approximation of 544).

    1. Re:Actually it's 64 by mattite · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but my engrish is a bit messed up. I meant to compare the new record to the current fastest link available at 40 Gbps. Solly!

    2. Re:Actually it's 64 by miikrr · · Score: 1

      2560000000000 (bits per second) / 8 (bits per byte) / 4670776934.4(bytes, approx. size of a dvd(4.35GB) = 68.5 DVD's. It's not that hard to come up with a more accurate comparison that the article stated, or to leave out the crucial fact that a bit and a byte are not equal as the above poster did.

    3. Re:Actually it's 64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the new record is 50 (or 64) times faster than the old one.
      You can't say that something is twice as slow, but rather that it is half as fast.

  11. Re:Digg Loses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  12. Nothing ever makes it out of the lab by b00m3rang · · Score: 3, Insightful

    into the real world, right? Why are they developing nuclear pebble bed reactors in laboratories, when I can't buy one at the 7-11 yet?

    1. Re:Nothing ever makes it out of the lab by Dhalka226 · · Score: 2, Funny

      "For comparison purposes, that speed would allow a recipient to download an average slashdot user's entire porn collection is just six hours 19 minutes."

    2. Re:Nothing ever makes it out of the lab by Dhalka226 · · Score: 1

      Damn it, clicked the wrong reply link. Please ignore me. :(

  13. Re:Digg Loses by mabinogi · · Score: 1

    you completely missed the point.

    Besides, if Digg is so much better, what the hell are you doing wasting time here?

    Someone might post a story to Digg while you're here, and you'll be 3 seconds slower getting to it!!!!1!

    --
    Advanced users are users too!
  14. shattered? ok but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    ok, it shattered that record. but the male ejaculation has a genetic bandwidth of 8.4 x 10^6 GiB/s.

    it'll be a while before they splatter that record.

    (oh, and the scrambled word I have to type in to post this as an AC is "saturate"! yes indeed)

    1. Re:shattered? ok but... by lamp540 · · Score: 1

      yeah, but with all the error correction(i.e. sending multiple sperm with the same message) that drops WAY down.

    2. Re:shattered? ok but... by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      It's not error correction.

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    3. Re:shattered? ok but... by bernywork · · Score: 1

      His parent was an AC, the error was obviously not corrected...

      Theoretically, it should have been aborted..

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    4. Re:shattered? ok but... by yndrd1984 · · Score: 1
      error correction(i.e. sending multiple sperm with the same message)

      Did you mean redundancy?

  15. Re:Digg Wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not the stories that make slashdot that were also (already) on digg that make me prefer slashdot, it's the stories that don't make slashdot but do make digg.

    The two sites are different. They have different communities, even if there is overlap. They both deserve to exist.

    If your idea of what makes this site worth visiting is how fast the stories make it to the front page then I invite you to go view digg and shut the f**k up about it.

  16. Digg Wins, But Only for Volume of Articles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Digg is a site dedicated to quantity of links, not quality of discussion. Looking at the general comments posted on any gived article, one could easily discern the individual classes: the technology elitists, the users with a preschool level grasp of grammar and spelling, the flamewarriors, and, most annoying, the anti-digg users. On /., however, a relevant, meaningful discussion will almost always result in response to any given article. I'm a frequent user of both sites; digg satisfies my F5 content cravings, while /. satisfies my understanding of broader issues(as well as my appreciation of good humor; digg users lack any vestige of it). For example, the inevitable discussion resulting from this article will probably not just be about the technological feat itself, but its applications to society, economics, and science in general. The digg discussion's highest rated thread related to, what else, how much pr0n you could download with the link.

  17. That's pretty slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only 60 DVD's per second? Any modernized form of SNAP (PDF), say using a number of donkeys in parallel or even a fully mechanical equivalent (truck, jet), could beat that any day.

    1. Re:That's pretty slow by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Informative

      At 100Km/hour, a truck would require 1.6 hours * 60^2 seconds/hour = 5,760 seconds to travel 160 kilometers. At 60 DVDs/second, the truck would have to be carrying 5760*60 = 345,600 DVDs to have equivalent bandwidth. A typical DVD in a case is 14cm wide, 19cm tall, and 1.5cm thick, for a total volume of 399 cm^3 (lets round to 400cm^3). Therefore, the truck would have to have a cargo volume of 400cm^3 * 345,600 = 138,240,000cm^3, or 138.24m^3.

      Now, typical intermodal containers (as used on big rig trucks) are 8.5' by 8.5' by 40', or 2890ft^3. Converted to metric, this is about 82m^3, which is less than the 138.24m^3 required.

      In other words, no, a truck full of DVDs is NOT faster than this connection!*

      *unless you put the DVDs on spindles instead of in cases.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:That's pretty slow by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 3, Funny

      The 11,520,000 ms ping times also might interfere with some applications.

    3. Re:That's pretty slow by rjforster · · Score: 2, Funny

      You're assuming only one truck can use the road at a time.

    4. Re:That's pretty slow by MikShapi · · Score: 1

      One big thing you missed...

      You have to add the "how long it takes to burn n DVD's and pack them on the sending side, and how long it takes to unpack, stick in a drive and read them on the receiving side.

      And we haven't even started talking latency yet....

      --
      -
    5. Re:That's pretty slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      could you repeat your measurements w/ 500 GB hard-drives? (It seems to me that their size is only a few DVD-case's worth, maybe 7 DVD's...)

    6. Re:That's pretty slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We were comparing a truck loaded with DVDs to the connection, not the road (which of course would be closer to the thruth, since a road and a fibre connection have more similarities)

    7. Re:That's pretty slow by Kjella · · Score: 3, Funny

      Where's the moderation for "+5 for extreme nerdiness, minus several million because you really should get out more"? /says someone who's closing in on 4000 posts to slashdot...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    8. Re:That's pretty slow by powerlord · · Score: 1

      Depends on the application. If you need the physical object for delivery (say for sale to end users), you're probably right, provided you need the physical object in a compact enough timeframe.

      If you just need the information then the only issues is storage at the far end, and the ability to mount the a disk image (which most modern operating systems should be able to do).

      Of course, in the hybrid case where you can produce a disk + colateral "relatively" rapidly for sale to a consumer, then the second option becomes even more enticing.

      Imagine a "blockbuster-esque" store, where you picked which movie you wanted to view, wanted 2 minutes, and had a copy in your hand for their new "rent it, but if it isn't back within x days your credit card will be charged as if you bought it" policy. Now imagine if the store had a catalog as big as IMDB, was never out of any movie, and you only had to wait a few minutes (3 minutes? 2 minutes?) to be holding the movie you wanted to watch in your hand.

      --
      This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
    9. Re:That's pretty slow by Kreigaffe · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well actually, trailers can be up to 53 feet long.. that increases their volume to 109m^3. That's still short, however I believe you're allowed to pull two trailers in any state (and even 3 in some).. 218m^3! Far above and beyond the paltry 138.24m^3 you need. In fact the extra room could carry a WHOLE LOT OF BEER.. for watching all those DVDs.

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    10. Re:That's pretty slow by bernywork · · Score: 1

      MOD PARENT UP!!!

      I want to see this happen..

      Can anyone come up with a business plan? (No, 1 2 3 Profit! doesn't count)

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    11. Re:That's pretty slow by BeanThere · · Score: 1

      (Yeah I'm humourless ...) not to mention the time required to load the DVDs on the truck, unload them again, and put them into the PC to read them ... whatever is on the other end of that 160km link is receiving all that data directly.

    12. Re:That's pretty slow by powerlord · · Score: 1

      There are downsides to the above description. :)
      1) The disk they give you will be a 'burned' disk vs a 'pressed' disk. It might have a shorter shelf life, and it will probably be more vulnerable to environmental issues (a downside to the consumer, not to the seller/studio).

      2) The above buisness plan has two potential competitors:
              i) Netflix and Blockbuster type 'delivered to your door' content. Why go out, when you have to wait only a few days to get a disk this way? (ultimately not something that can be easily answered unless you need a disk 'now', which tends to be a smaller percentage of the possible purchases).
              ii) Video on Demand. The natural evolution (assuming the studios allow it to happen), is to download the video you want, and either have a window you can watch it in, a number of times you can watch it, or a limited amount of storage you can keep at one time. TiVo has already started playing with this model, and was rumored to have partnered with Netflix awhile back. I participated in a trial which downloaded "Red Pants" the docu-history of Hong-Kong Stuntmen. I found the download quite good, and would probably consider 'renting' movies this way. The movie, once downloaded to my TiVo was allowed to hang out as long as I wanted, but took up space (a good thing, it took me a few weeks to clear time to watch it). I tried seeing if I could download it via TiVo2Go (so I could watch it on my PSP to/from work), but its locked down as a non-copiable program (the same as RocketBoom is during their current 'VideoCast trial').

      Ultimately I believe that this is the future for the rental model ... possibly even the purchase model (the way iTunes is for music and trying to be for TV/Video right now).

      --
      This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
    13. Re:That's pretty slow by bernywork · · Score: 1

      1) The disk they give you will be a 'burned' disk vs a 'pressed' disk. It might have a shorter shelf life,

      In time this will be overcome, and yes, burnt discs I think would have a shelf life, at the same time, you could just recopy the disc or transfer it to HDD. For average joe, this could be a problem.

      At the same time, right now, I can't see VOD having the same catalogue as a big blockbuster or otherwise. Simply because of the complications with last mile.

      I can go down the road and get a movie (Truck / station wagon full of media) and be home in 10 mins. I can't download a DVD quality movie in 10 mins (Wish I could but..) so again the problem would be last mile, VOD for cable doesn't support the bandwidth for a large warehouse of video, and ADSL can't support the short time frames in which people would want to watch it (Within 10 mins)

      FTTH (Fibre to the Home) would be able to support it, but unless you are one of the lucky ones, FTTH is a long way off for a lot of people.

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
  18. And so it begins by Darby · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well folks, time to gear up.

    We know what happens when the Germans and the Japanese collaborate ;-)

    1. Re:And so it begins by GeorgeMcBay · · Score: 1


      We know what happens when the Germans and the Japanese collaborate ;-)


      The Italians are already trying to find ways to use this technology to make the trains run on time.

    2. Re:And so it begins by slashdotmsiriv · · Score: 1

      "We know what happens when the Germans and the Japanese collaborate ;-)"

      Why do I have a feeling that the first company to not be able to adopt the new ultra-high-speed technology and effectively be pushed out of the market will be the French Alcatel?

    3. Re:And so it begins by Mancat · · Score: 1

      Scheisse porn with tentacle rape?

      --
      hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
    4. Re:And so it begins by Telvin_3d · · Score: 1

      Don't look now, but I think the French just preemptively surrendered.
      This was shortly before the Italians announced their adoption of the new method. Which was shortly followed by their switch back to the Western standards.

    5. Re:And so it begins by humble.fool · · Score: 1

      Now the real question is this: Does this invoke Godwin's Rule?

      --
      Being anonymous is not cowardice.
    6. Re:And so it begins by jaxon6 · · Score: 1

      The historical accuracy can not be conveyed so easily. Here goes:

      Germany and Japan had a secret alliance. Japan agreed that whomever Germany declared war against, Japan would follow suit, and vice versa. Japan delcared war against the United States of America on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. The following day, the United States declared war on the country of Japan. Because of the secret reciprocal agreement between Germany and Japan, Germany was forced to declare war on the United States.
      At this time the United States was forced to delcare war on Germany. This was an integral turning point in the war. Germany was no longer fighting a dual-front war, with Russia at the east and England at the west. Germany was now fighting a three-front war, with the third front being the United States. This automatic reciprocal agreement by Germany to declare war against any enemy of Japan is considered by many to be the decisive error made by Nazi Germany, and more specifically by Adolf Hitler.

      --
      Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
    7. Re:And so it begins by bxbaser · · Score: 1

      gear up.
      you mean do nothing for a few years while the enemy can get worn down a bit and then get forced into it.

    8. Re:And so it begins by fbjon · · Score: 1

      So technically, it was the Japanese who liberated Europe?

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
    9. Re:And so it begins by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      I'd say yes, although Godwin's law is more confirmed than invoked, since in its basic form, it only talks about the probability of (Usenet|online)? discussions reaching certain topics. But nitpicking aside, I think a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" mention of Nazism that doesn't actually *say* the word is pretty much the same as one that does. It's what's being said that matters, after all, not the exact words chosen (or not chosen).

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    10. Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      England? they were fighting the British Empire (and bits of the commonwealth). Canada lept in almost immediately, for starters.

    11. Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, we've beat 'em twice, we can do it again. No offense intended to any japanese or german readers out there, You guys have done some pretty amazing stuff.

    12. Re:And so it begins by swillden · · Score: 1

      Germany was no longer fighting a dual-front war, with Russia at the east and England at the west. Germany was now fighting a three-front war, with the third front being the United States.

      A "front" is a geographical region along which a fight is taking place. When you count fronts, you count the number of regions in which substantial (for the conflict) fighting is taking place. The number of opposing nations or organizations doesn't matter.

      Although Germany was involved in the conflict in Africa and in the Middle East, those were relatively minor campaigns compared to the scale of the global conflict, so they aren't generally called "fronts". When the US entered the war, Germany was fighting on two fronts, the newly-created Eastern Front, against Soviet forces, and the Western Front, against the British Commonwealth (and its allies, but France was occupied and the rest were relatively small potatoes). The US entry didn't create a new front, it just hugely augmented the allied forces opposing Germany from the west, providing the men and materiel needed for a large expansion of the western conflict, including the invasion of Normandy (which probably would have happened without US participation, but later, and smaller).

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    13. Re:And so it begins by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Funny
      Well folks, time to gear up.

      We know what happens when the Germans and the Japanese collaborate ;-)

      Yeah, breaded and deep fried sushi, dark beer in small cups, and Teryaki sausages, LOTS of cabbage, and bubble-tea streusel.

      Oh, the humanity of it all.
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    14. Re:And so it begins by swillden · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So technically, it was the Japanese who liberated Europe?

      If you want to look at it that way, it was the Soviets who liberated Europe. Hitler's decision to attack Russia was the beginning of the end for Germany. The Eastern Front diverted and tied down much of Germany's military power, in a conflict that they were almost certain to lose. No one will know for sure, of course, but it's probable that the allies eventually would have liberated Europe even without the direct involvement of the US. The end would not have come as quickly, and the victory would probably not have been so complete, but it's unlikely that Germany would have retained much of the territory it had conquered. More likely, Germany itself, and perhaps much of the rest of Europe, would have fallen under Soviet control.

      So maybe the Japanese liberated the French from the Russians :-)

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    15. Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, like the Joy Division and Rape of Nanking.

    16. Re:And so it begins by Chrondeath · · Score: 1

      Isn't Godwin's Law about comparing someone or something to Nazis in the context of an argument? I don't think it applies to stand-alone jokes...

    17. Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, heaven forbid we forget Canada's involvement in anything lest a Canadian cry and start a speech on how the Avero Arrow would have been the most important war machine had the Americans not 'made' them stop developing it.

    18. Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Germany and Japan had a secret alliance...

      Except that it was hardly secret, and more importantly, is not really relevant to the current discussion.

    19. Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, the first time around Japan helped beat Germany.

  19. Re:Digg Loses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdot has the non-time sensitive, most interesting news - with insightful or interesting comments.

    R O F L M A O... Thanks for the laugh, I needed that..

  20. sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's sad that almost every comment so far is a unit or conversion joke, and they are all getting modded funny. in soviet russia, units measure old people.

  21. Re:Digg Wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sean Duffy! Why, your music is all over campus!

  22. Re:Digg Loses by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Yes, but when I read both Slashdot and Digg, I only have to look at one /. page, but having looked at the front two pages of Digg a couple of times the last two days, I totally missed that story. Digg may have a lot of these stories first, but sometimes they don't stay on your front page. I have to do that diggall thing, and sort through lots of crap to get to the new stories.

  23. Re:Digg Wins by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "I hate to admit it, but Digg is starting to overshadow Slashdot (though Digg comments are horrible)."

    Is the Digg offering rewards to ppl who spam it on Slashdot or something? Digg is better than Slashdot. Whoop-de-fuck.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  24. who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Who really cares about this when their personal internet is stuck at 4Mbps down/256Kbps up?

    1. Re:who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Why do you need more? So you can steal more movies?"

      Yep, and laugh at the MPAA.

    2. Re:who cares? by multi+io · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This technology enables many more people to be simultaneously stuck at 4Mbps down/256Kbps up.

    3. Re:who cares? by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 1

      Heh. My ISP recently offered that an extra A$10/month would see my speed upgraded from 8Mbps/128Kbps (Though I tended to see about 10Mbps) to 17Mbps/256Kbps - I now regularly download 2 megabytes a second. Wee.

  25. Not filling 1gb pipe by swpod · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I've done some checking of aggregate SAN bandwidth in the last few months, and for the most part companies are not even saturating their 2 gbit Fibre Channel links (for that matter, most could easily run with legacy 1 gbit gear). Even the inter-switch links are often crusing well below 2 gbit. Funny to note that the big push is to release 4 gbit gear, for what conceivable purpose I have no idea.

    It just seems to me that the real issue is access time, not bandwidth, though kudos to this team for an essentially meaningless achievement.

    --
    Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.
    1. Re:Not filling 1gb pipe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last time I checked... and I could be wrong here... there are no SAN fabrics that have nodes 160km apart. I'm really not sure why you related this to SAN switching setups, but this is about WAN configurations.

    2. Re:Not filling 1gb pipe by fbjon · · Score: 1

      Yes, but in the future when 10 million people watch the opening ceremony of the olympics in streaming HD quality on the net, a few of these pipes will come in handy. Besides, access times are limited by that damn speed of light anyway.

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
    3. Re:Not filling 1gb pipe by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 1

      Alternatively, you could just use multicast, which has been around for many many years and was specifically designed to reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to do things like just that.

    4. Re:Not filling 1gb pipe by jacksonj04 · · Score: 1

      Remember that this isn't designed for home usage, or even last-mile for businesses. This is designed for cross-continental data transfer.

      --
      How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
    5. Re:Not filling 1gb pipe by BeanThere · · Score: 1

      Funny, it wasn't that long ago (5 or 6 years?) that I used to often say the same thing about 100Mbits/s when that had become the norm, and the PCs / hard disks of the time couldn't saturate the connection. Within just a few years most new PCs and hard disks could easily saturate a 100Mb connection ... I fully expect the same will become true of 1Gbit/s within perhaps a few years or so, so I don't make comments like that so quickly anymore :)

  26. I sense a great disturbance in the force by LordEd · · Score: 1

    ... as if millions of RIAA execs suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

  27. everybody needs this at home by __aahlyu4518 · · Score: 1

    for when you get this at your place :

    http://www.onzin.nl/internetdownload/

    1. Re:everybody needs this at home by Technician · · Score: 1

      for when you get this at your place :
      http://www.onzin.nl/internetdownload/ [onzin.nl]


      The site could use more bandwidth. I'm sitting on an enterprise broadband connection, but could only manage dial-up speeds of 14.2KB/second from them. We must have slashdoted them.

      --
      The truth shall set you free!
  28. Way cool... by threedognit3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm calling my cable company to see if I can pay $25,000/month to get the data rate. Needless to say this will increase the downloads of my extremely intelligent blog.

  29. Re:Digg Wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm. So there at least 3 people at Columbia reading slashdot around 2 AM on a Saturday night. This leads me to 2 questions.

    1) How cool are we? (rhetorical)

    and

    2) How many others are there?

  30. Great Things Happen by eAspenwood · · Score: 1

    when the Germans and the Japanese unite...oh wait.... There's a french joke somewhere in here but I just can't pull it out at the moment... i give up. -- J.

    1. Re:Great Things Happen by Aidski · · Score: 1

      But can the German/Japanese data get past the mighty Maginot Firewall?

  31. thought this looked old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  32. A 160-kilometer link? by __aawfbm2023 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Equivalent to 160,000 metres and 160,000,000 millimetres!

    1. Re:A 160-kilometer link? by ichigo+2.0 · · Score: 1

      And 160,000,000,000 micrometers and 160,000,000,000,000 nanometers. What's your point?

    2. Re:A 160-kilometer link? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or ~100 miles, ~174978 yards, ~524934 feet or ~6299212 inches.

    3. Re:A 160-kilometer link? by __aawfbm2023 · · Score: 1

      Point is - it's fairly obvious that 2.56 Tb/s = 2,560,000,000,000 b/s thanks to the wonders of the metric system.

  33. Basic requirement soon enough. by Funkcikle · · Score: 2, Funny

    Vista will require this much bandwidth as a minimum, to download security patches and have them rendered in erotic 3D by the compulsory 4Tb graphics card, when it is released in THE YEAR 3000.

    1. Re:Basic requirement soon enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How in the name of blue fuck is this "Funny"?

    2. Re:Basic requirement soon enough. by Zaatxe · · Score: 1

      Easy, little fellow... Futurama is over, unfortunatelly...

      --
      So say we all
  34. Try 10,000 Kilometers by layer3switch · · Score: 1

    The researcher assumes the transmission capacity on the large transoceanic traffic links will need to increase to between 50 and 100 terabits per second in ten to 20 years. "This kind of capacity will only be feasible with the new high-performance systems."

    160 kilometers? large transoceanic traffic link? When 10,000 kilometers of non-repeated distance can be achieved, I'll be impressed. Until then it's nothing but a bragging right.

    --
    "Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
    1. Re:Try 10,000 Kilometers by barefootgenius · · Score: 1
      Not that I know how it works, but I would imagine they you would have to use something like entaglement or this.


      http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/2/15/1?rss= 2.0


      Its a while off though, I would imagine.

      --
      /. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
    2. Re:Try 10,000 Kilometers by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Optical fiber gives you a loss of approx a quarter dB per km (0.25 dB/km) - which is very close to the theoretical limit of current glass optical fibers. At 160 km, that gives you an attenuation in your optical signal of about 40 dB. All-optical amplifiers - EDFAs - (without signal regeneration, just plain amplification) can give you a good boost in power and you can cascade many before the signal becomes too distorted (because each amplifier amplifies both the noise and the signal). An other type of all-optical amplifier - DRAs - give you a lesser gain, but they do not amplify the noise (pretty cool concept!), so a combination of EDFAs and DRAs can get you an all-optical link - without regenerators - of several thousands of kms! Research scientists do work in a modular fashion. One research group works on one aspect of a problem and other groups work on other aspects. In this case, if one span of optical fiber (without amplifiers) can handle very high bit rates, it is not too difficult to extend this to ultra long haul (UHL) networks which have many spans of optical fibers with all-optical amplifiers - provided that you have amplifiers available for the band of wavelengths that you are using. I am guessing that this is a limitation to this experiment, but a lot of research is done by other groups on all-optical amplifiers working in different wavelength bands. One group cannot do it all, but they rather concentrate on one area and let other groups develop the other areas. So this is indeed a pretty cool and impressive result if we understand the experiment and can see its implication for future optical networks!

      --
      DrkBr
  35. Re:Digg Loses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Slashdot has the non-time sensitive, most interesting news - with insightful or interesting comments.
    Ironically, that is quite possibly the least insightful or interesting comment on Slashdot...or anywhere for that matter.

    Take a few minutes to stand back and actually read that awful streak of feces colloquially referred to on Slashdot as a "comment". Then, while wondering why the "extrans" feature doesn't work, why you can't edit comments, and why Slashdot's backend only supports 7-bit ASCII, poke your eyes out.

    P.S. "Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down.".

    HUNT THEM DOWN?! Oh yeah, like everyone on the planet knows how to "hunt them down" with nothing but a couple of garbage hashes. But nice try. You win the prize, Slashdot.
  36. Re:Digg Wins by seanduffy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    haha, who is this? and yes, why are there so many columbia ppl on so late?

    --
    check out my music biatches. www.seanduffymusic.com
  37. Well thats nothing by mikek3332002 · · Score: 1

    I can send data at about 300,000m/s (its called turning the light on)

    1. Re:Well thats nothing by Workaphobia · · Score: 1

      Really? Because I can send mine at 300,000,000 m/s instead of .001 c. ;)

      --
      Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
    2. Re:Well thats nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    3. Re:Well thats nothing by StarkRG · · Score: 1

      That's still only 300,000,000 bit*meters/second... or 300 MbMps... emmbumips

    4. Re:Well thats nothing by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      so you are sending data at low latency. what about the bandwidth?

      --
      Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
  38. fiber optics by planckscale · · Score: 1
    "...researchers have now managed to squeeze more data into a single pulse by packing four, instead of the previous two, binary data states in a light pulse using phase modulation."

    Is this similar to DDR memory where they pack info into the upward swing of the wave, and on the downward swing, as well as the troughs and peaks of the waves?

    --
    Namaste
  39. 60 DVD:s per second... by MadTinfoilHatter · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and in related news, the spokesman for the MPAA is currently unable to comment due to suffering a heart attack.

  40. What did they send? by Whiteox · · Score: 1

    "...transmitting a data signal at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160-kilometer link..."

    Ok Amazing speed etc etc etc but what did they send?
    Was it encrypted?
    Was it DRMed???

    --
    Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
    1. Re:What did they send? by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 1

      Unless this is meant as a joke and I am not getting it, your comment doesn't make much sense in the context of optical networks. Currently, optical networks are dumb pipes that are used in a point-to-point fashion. In other words, they send your data, regardless of what it is. It is protocol transparent, so you can send whatever traffic you want. It can be encrypted, numerically encoded in any way that you like, that's the job of the electronic components. When dealing with optical networks, we assume that the electronic components can handle their work load. This is the main reason why we use many wavelengths to achieve such high wavelengths. Each wavelength can send slower traffic rates, but the overall rate of the optical link is the sum of the rates of each individual wavelength. For example, assume that you have 3 lasers of different colors: blue, green and red. Laser blue sends info at 40 Gbps on the optical fiber (any type of data, previously encrypted or not). Laser green and red send data at the same rate. At the receiver, we select each color individually and recover the signal carried by that "light color", i.e. the wavelength. Each laser may be sending 40 Gbps, but the overall transmission capacity of the fiber was increased to 120 Gbps by using different "colors".

      --
      DrkBr
    2. Re:What did they send? by Whiteox · · Score: 1

      Very interesting: So how many usable 'colours' do lasers have? Are higher frequencies into the maser range also work? Infrared?
      Thanks

      --
      Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
    3. Re:What did they send? by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 1

      Lasers come in many shapes and sizes! For telecom purposes, DFB lasers are used quite a bit and they can be made for many colors (or in more technical jargon for different wavelengths). Most of the time, a laser has a single wavelength, but this wavelength can be different for different lasers (you just have to play with certain parameters on the physical structure of the laser). There are also lasers that are said tunable as they can achieve different color by allowing dynamic control of the said physical parameter (which is usually the cavity length, but sometimes can be the temperature of the cavity)

      For telecomm purposes, lasers are often located in the THz band (in wavelength, common lasers are sitting at the 1550 nm band and 1310 nm (which correspond to wavelengths where the loss of an optical fiber is minimal)

      Of course, you can get lasers working at wavelengths far from this, in the UV and far-UV region (e.g. I work almost daily with a laser operating at 244 nm), there are some in the visible spectrum (which is about 400-750 nm). And those I mentioned in the 1310 nm and 1550 nm region are obviously in the IR (infrared) region of the spectrum.

      Hope this helps!

      --
      DrkBr
  41. In the name of... by rupert0 · · Score: 1

    porn.... the germans uploaded 30 dvd's of their famouse Scheiße porn, and the japanese uploaded 30 dvd's of their bukkake favorites

    --
    RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
    1. Re:In the name of... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "porn.... the germans uploaded 30 dvd's of their famouse Scheiße porn, and the japanese uploaded 30 dvd's of their bukkake favorites"

      I am so not going to Google those words to find out what they mean... :-P

  42. MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdot has the non-time sensitive, most interesting news - with insightful or interesting comments.
     
    Mod parent +5 FUNNY

    1. Re:MOD PARENT UP by Valdoran · · Score: 1

      He wasn't talking about your comment, you know. ;)

  43. Re:Digg Wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why do you even compare it to Digg ?,and the stories are same you say,perhaps you prefer /. writing fictious articles about events that have not occured ?./. is here for the discussion,you are literally comparing apples and oranges,don't ever compare /. to digg again!,the next time you do that,i might throw a chair at you !.

  44. Re:Digg Wins by adolfojp · · Score: 2, Informative

    Digg is great for learning of new technologies. Slashdot is great because of its discussions. They are complementary websites. I don't see digg replacing slashdot anytime soon, yet, I am glad that digg is there to fill my need of having "as many tech news as possible" available.

    Trying to have good discussions in Digg is futile because of its moderation system. And whenever discussion worthy news are available they are quickly buried by ten articles of what someone somewhere might have said about the color of the new Nintendo console.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo

  45. faster than ram by pintomp3 · · Score: 1

    i could be wrong, but isn't that like faster than the communications between parts in a computer including RAM? is there a computer that can feed that much data that fast?

    1. Re:faster than ram by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Faster than RAM? No, the distance a signal has to travel from system memory to the CPU is no more than half a meter. This is 160,000 meters. If you mean that in the way a school bus is 'faster' than a ferarri, yes.

    2. Re:faster than ram by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The target use for something like this is Internet backbone traffic, so the question is whether Cisco will be able to deliver a router that will keep the line busy. Cisco's web site says "the innovative 12000 Terabit System scales to 5 Terabits (Tbps) per second ".

    3. Re:faster than ram by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 1

      No, the speed of electronics limits the overall transmision rate on an optical channel. But, scientists know that optical fibers have a very wide available bandwidth. How can we exploit it, even though the electronics are slow? We use different colors of light. Each color sends a signal of, let's say, 40 Gbps, and electronic components can deal with that. If we have hundreds of different light colors going into a single fiber, we multiply the bit rate and the transmission capacity is increased significantly. But, at both the transmitter and the receiver, we must have hundreds of electronic components for all the different colors. So why would we want to do this? Well, installing fibers or electrical cables is extremely expensive so we want to maximise the capacity of each cable or optical fiber. (for example, think about transoceanic cables!) We rather have many electronic components at the transmit and receive side than install new fibers! It is a cost issue at this point.

      --
      DrkBr
    4. Re:faster than ram by SCSI-Terminator · · Score: 1

      Well, Cisco also makes the CRS-1, which they advertise as being able to handle up to 92Tbps. Of course, the fastest you can do over a single pair of fiber with this system is 40Gbps, which is an OC-768.

      I just happen to work where the CRS-1 is built, and althou I can't go and start breaking NDA's. I can say that a system that is max configured for have a switching capasity of 92Tbps, spans across 72 linecard racks and 8 switch fabric racks (each rack being the size of a fridge), making the whole system seem more like a supercomputer rather than 1 gigantic router.

  46. The last mile... by Tracy+Reed · · Score: 0

    ...is all I care about anymore. A zillion bits per second in the lab or even in a backbone link doesn't do me a bit of good when my cablemodem has me restricted to 128k of upstream bandwidth. I just put together a killer computer system with more cpu, memory, RAM, and disk than I am likely to need anytime soon all for less than a kilobuck but decent bandwidth is still simply not available.

    1. Re:The last mile... by Detritus · · Score: 1

      It's inherent in the design of the cable modem and the cable network. There is only one uplink channel and each cable modem is assigned a time slot on that uplink channel (TDMA). There can be many downlink channels.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  47. Close by SnarfQuest · · Score: 0

    That's almost fast enough to support the average Slashdot's readers requirements for pron.

    --
    Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
  48. Re:Digg Wins by bxbaser · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I could have called my 13 year old nephew 2 days ago to discuss this.

    But i didnt.

    I read many site daily all have thier place, the value of slashdot isnt in its stories its in information thats submitted in the posts.

    If you want the story when it happens read digg if you want to get a better understanding and possible information from someone that (worked there, worked on, was part of) then you read slashdot.

  49. So that's about 3.28 times of NetBSD's record by gd · · Score: 1

    From this link: http://proj.sunet.se/LSR3-s/ (This was from an old /. story)

    NetBSD's Internet2 land speed record was (back at Sep'04):

    # Network Distance: 28,983 kilometers
    # Data transferred: 1831.05 Gigabytes (1966080000000 bytes)
    # Time: 3648.81 seconds

    Which equals 124.935 petabit-meters/second (1,966,080,000,000 * 8 * 28,983,000 / 3648.81)

    Record in this story equals:

    2,560,000,000,000 * 160,000 = 409,600,000,000,000,000 bit-meters/second = 409.6 petabit-meters/second

    So that's about 3.28 times of NetBSD's record. Considering the fact that NetBSD's record was about 1.5 years old and they were using off the shelf hardware (Dell 2650 and Dell 650, Intel Pro/10GbE, routers were Cisco highend) except the routers, this new record is not all that impressive IMHO.

    --
    gd
    1. Re:So that's about 3.28 times of NetBSD's record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um... stop making up fake units of measurement to support your zealot FUD.

      The _real_ units are bits per second. Your NetBSD numbers are around 0.5Gb/s which is five thousand times less than 2.5Tb/s. Incredible bullshit.

    2. Re:So that's about 3.28 times of NetBSD's record by goosman · · Score: 1

      Here's the latest on the I2 LSR: http://lsr.internet2.edu/ The current record: http://data-reservoir.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lsr-2005 1114/sub.html which is 208,800terabit meters / second.

  50. Single-channel only by Soft · · Score: 2, Informative

    To be sure, I believe this is a single-wavelength transmission record. For WDM (multiwavelength), I believe Alcatel's 2002 record of 10 Tbps over 3 x 100 km still hasn't been topped (Frignac et al, OFC 2002).

    1. Re:Single-channel only by Mashdar · · Score: 1

      WDM? We need to do something about this Al Ca'tel before they do something drastic. This calls for a preemptive strike.

    2. Re:Single-channel only by DRUNK_BEAR · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the article is not clear on that detail, but I am aware of the record you are talking about. Nevertheless, 2.56 Tbps is nothing too impressive nowadays if it is using WDM.

      --
      DrkBr
  51. 2.56 terabits per second? by nickgrieve · · Score: 1

    whats that in libraries of Congress per second... is that the same as shuttle launches per second, or I am I getting confused with burning libraries of congress per shuttle launch?

  52. Re:Digg Wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You people need to quit being stupid fratboys. As a recent grad, it's embarrassing.

  53. Ooooh Multiple choice! by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 1

    This will...
    A.) Make internet (connection fees) 50x cheaper.
    2.) Finally still western telecoms complaining about the difficulties of offering fast service.
    3.) Be considered too expensive to implement until someone who can't be bribed or bough enters the telecom game.
    4.) Never see the light of day.
    5.) Be implemented perfectly showing the telecommunications industy has a commitment to quality!

    1. Re:Ooooh Multiple choice! by JimXugle · · Score: 0

      I choose 6.

      2, 3, and 4.

      --
      -jX

      Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
    2. Re:Ooooh Multiple choice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Geez.. Go back to grade school. 2, 3 and 4 equals 9, not six ;-)

    3. Re:Ooooh Multiple choice! by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      No. (2 and 3 and 4) gives 0 according to my Pascal compiler.

  54. Perhaps, but... by ickeicke · · Score: 1

    Perhaps so, but you probably can't send 60 DVDs worth of data per second with a light bulb, can you?

    --
    Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
    1. Re:Perhaps, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well durr, just quickly turn it on and off.

  55. Hardware? by Langfat · · Score: 1

    I RTFA but didn't see any mention of hardware specs, so what did they use? What kind of disk can process that amount of information per second? Any speculations?

    I have a feeling that if you tried hooking up my laptop, its 4200 rpm drive would pack up and walk out of the door, on principle alone ;)

    1. Re:Hardware? by Presence2 · · Score: 1

      good point, last mile bandwidth becomes pointless unless all our data exists soley in RAM, rather then on rewritable media like a hard drive. No hard drive can ever hope to read or write fast enough to cope with a fraction of that throughput, so such technology is only useful between telco hubs... I doubt the end user would ever notice the difference.

  56. Re:Digg Loses by LilGuy · · Score: 1

    Can't we all just get along?

    Seriously though, I don't see the need for a debate on which site is better... just use what you use and let it be.

    --

    You're nothing; like me.
  57. Not that obvious... by bogd · · Score: 1

    Considering that 1 Gb is (at least sometimes) equal to 1,024 Mb = 1,048,576 Kb = 1,073,741,824 bits , I wouldn't say that it's that obvious. Thanks to the wonders of the binary system :P

    1. Re:Not that obvious... by dohzer · · Score: 1

      Not anymore, thanks to the Gibibit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibit/

    2. Re:Not that obvious... by bogd · · Score: 1
      The wikipedia gibibit link tells me that "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name."

      However, allow me to quote from the article on Giga: In computing, giga- can sometimes mean 1 073 741 824 (2^30) for information units, eg gigabit or gigabyte, but can also denote 1 000 000 000 of other quantities, e.g. transfer rates: 1 gigabit/s = 1 000 000 000 bit/s. The binary prefix gibi- has been suggested for 2^30, to resolve this ambiguity, but has yet to achieve widespread usage.

      So until "gibi" becomes a standard, the ambiguity remains.

    3. Re:Not that obvious... by dohzer · · Score: 1

      Well most people I know have adopted it as standard, but if you want to prolong the ambiguity, be my guest.

  58. "not were" , but "are used" by aepervius · · Score: 1

    Quote "* 9 bits were sometimes used"
    Some of us are still working on 36 bits words, 9 bits per byte :). And if you are asking, think reservation/check in system of some big airlines around here...

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
    1. Re:"not were" , but "are used" by Cerium · · Score: 1

      ...

      So thats why it takes 3 hours to get on a plane these days.

  59. Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by PSaltyDS · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We have a 30TB EMC CX-500 with Brocade 2Gb FC backbone. The bench moves blocks of a few hundred GB to a dozen servers or less. We have never come anywhere near %50 utilization on the FC.

    The transfers run about 4-6hrs and I was looking for choke points to shorten the time. The data simply won't go to disk any faster on the U320 SCSI bus. We consistently measure 20MBps max to disk, which makes sense. U320 means 320Mbps/8 = 20MBps. So I get the same max numbers for local disk-to-disk that I get for SAN-to-disk, and the same results regardless of OS. If this rate could be maintained, six servers doing the transfer should just about saturate the backbone, but the overhead of file access and FS management mean the max is only maintained for a moment as a few particularly large files come across. With lots of smaller files being copied, the average rate goes down to 2MBps.

    If these servers had to be optimized for SAN-to-Disk transfer rate, they would have to have multiple SCSI controllers and HBAs, paired up on seperate PCI busses, and the data would have to be optimized with fewer/larger files.

    Of course, the 2.5TBps link is of interest to ISPs and regional carriers not server labs, but I thought I'd throw in what we've seen on the utilization of a 2Gbps FC link in a SAN setup.

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
    1. Re:Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Create the bandwidth and someone will find an application for it.

    2. Re:Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by Fweeky · · Score: 1

      "U320 means 320Mbps/8 = 20MBps"

      Er, no, U320 means 320MBps, or about 2.5Gbps. 320Mbps is SCSI-2 Wide (16 bit) or SCSI-3 Narrow (8 bit), which were standard about 15 years ago.

      Go get some coffee.

    3. Re:Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by ottffssent · · Score: 2, Informative

      What are you talking about? U/320 SCSI is 320 megabytes per second. Not bits. In a regular PCI slot on an unloaded bus, a U/320 HBA is limited to 90-110MB/sec, but with PCI-X or PCIe that limitation is removed, and single HBAs can readily sustain 500+MB/sec sequential reads from arrays spanning multiple SCSI channels.

      Of course, in many applications, latency of varying sorts quickly chews that number down to something a bit more sane.

      If you're limited to a hard 20MB/sec over SCSI, the first thing I would suggest is to make sure that you're actually operating at U/320 speeds, and your HBA and drive(s) haven't fallen back to one of the SE modes for some reason (faulty connection, crummy cable, missing / buggy / broken / wrong terminator, etc).

    4. Re:Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      U320 means 320Mbps/8 = 20MBps.

      I pray to $deity you are not a sysadmin.

    5. Re:Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by PSaltyDS · · Score: 1

      Coffee what's that? :-)

      --
      Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
    6. Re:Filesystem and Ultra320 SCSI are our chokepoint by PSaltyDS · · Score: 1

      Yeah, pretty dumb... could have at least got 320/8 = x straight...

      I'll just copy the data and let the smart people figure out how fast is should be going. If there are config issues to be solved by the smart ones though, it still seems to be inside the host (as opposed to HBA/FC) because the same performance holds for local disk-to-disk copy, no errors, just slower than maybe it should be.

      Shuttin' up while I save up for a shiny new clue... :-)

      --
      Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
  60. Gizmag? by veeoh · · Score: 1

    (snorts coffee out of nose)

    Cant beat a good Gizmag

  61. Until the kit can handle it... by MancDiceman · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what the utility of this is right now. In theory I could send 5.12 terabits/sec down a cable by getting the laser to flash on and off twice as quickly. That doesn't mean I've encoded any data or that I've been able to process that data at the other end in a meaningful way.

    It's great that the transmission hardware is up to silly speeds, but until you can take that incoming data and packet switch/route it properly, until there are servers that can process even a tenth of that data in a meaningful way, this isn't something that will affect anybody, anywhere, other than for the people involved whose paper will get published.

    1. Re:Until the kit can handle it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sems to me that you want the entire development to appear at the one time, on your doorstep with a little bow saying "New Invention".

      Sorry, thats just plain not going to happen.

      You need a starting point. Whos to say that in a few years thier research will be the basis for a world wide network of incredible speeds. Think of the Music Industry! *cough* i mean, the Children!

  62. just like the french!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    \o/

  63. thus covering both ends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's quite a mix

  64. I did this in HS, piece of cake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I did this in HS and won the science fair 2nd place, transfering lots of zeros and ones (but only all zeros or all ones ahha!) as fast as the harddrives could write them. On a pair of Amigas connecting using serial cable. The colorful dial that measured the file size and draw a fancy counter took a while to do, the actual transfer of all the zeros and ones was a piece of cake.

  65. Still pretty slow... by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

    In fact, I'll bet a U-haul truck loaded with DVDs would still be faster.

    1. Re:Still pretty slow... by egomaniac · · Score: 1

      In fact, I'll bet a U-haul truck loaded with DVDs would still be faster.

      Assume the U-Haul truck maintains an average speed of 80km/h (roughly 50mph). It would take 2 hours for it to travel the entire distance. At a speed of 2.56 terabits/sec, this network link could transmit 2.25 petabytes over 2 hours. 2.25 petabytes = about half a million DVDs.

      I'd love to see a U-Haul truck carrying half a million DVDs. More than that, I would love to see the effort involved in burning, packing, loading, unloading, unpacking, and reading half a million DVDs -- none of which is counted against the U-Haul's bandwidth.

      I hope you are being facetious when you suggest that the ability to transmit 250,000 DVDs an hour is "still pretty slow".

      --
      ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
    2. Re:Still pretty slow... by JimXugle · · Score: 0

      Naw... I think this link will win.

      You forgot to calculate in what happens when the truck catches on fire.

      --
      -jX

      Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
    3. Re:Still pretty slow... by slothman32 · · Score: 1

      It might not be in DVD form.
      Maybe in generic HDs where bit density is higher.
      Of course unlike the wires the trucks can go anywhere with only roads needed and many times not that.
      The wire form needs wires or satellites or radio which probably don't work as well.

      --
      Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
    4. Re:Still pretty slow... by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      Of course... I was making a thinly veiled reference to Tannenbaum... you should have seen that right away...

  66. Gee, that's fast.... by KillerBob · · Score: 1

    The article says nothing about how long they can *sustain* it for. I mean, great. They can transfer 282 GByte in one second. If they can only do it for one second before the system breaks down, then I really don't care. Call me when they make a system that can transfer that data rate indefinitely.

    --
    If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
  67. revisionist bull. Without US supplies, Russia was by CFD339 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ....just throwing bodies and bad weather at the Germans. Germany and Japan made the same mistake British had made 150 years prior. They believed that the people of the United States (or in the case of the British the disparate group of colonial rabble) could not agree on anything long enough to make use of the resources at hand -- which in all cases were grossly underestimated -- long enough to put up any kind of serious organized fight. The British were very close to right, but by the time WWII came around the Germans and Japanese had absolutely no understanding of the combined industrial, human, and natural resources available to the American people nor the pride and resolve that would allow such divided people to unify in a common goal.

    Once Japan and Germany woke the sleeping dog, there was no other possible outcome if you just look at resources and people.

    Of course, we all need to be VERY careful not to make the same mistake underestimating China or India -- both of whom have vast resources, people, knowledge, and a deeply held social pride to draw on.

    --
    The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
  68. Re:revisionist bull. Without US supplies, Russia w by swillden · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You notice that you call my post "revisionist bullshit" and then proceed not to disagree with me.

    Your post primarily says that once the US entered the fray the end was clear, which I completely agree with. What I said was that even if the US had not entered the war, Germany still would have lost (though without US involvement, Japan would probably rule much of Asia). It's interesting that you mention supplies: The US was supplying the allied forces before it actually entered the war, but the US supplies, both before and after 1942 went primarily to the western front. AFAIK, the US never provided significant supplies to the Russians; there really was no way for us to do so.

    I will concede that the US entry into the war and the Normandy invasion did help take the pressure off of the Soviets, but I think it's far from clear that Hitler every could have conquered the Russians. The USSR was too big, too populous and too powerful, even if it didn't have the level of industrialization the US had.

    It's all speculation, but I think even without the US involvement, the Soviets would have fought Hitler to a standstill, consuming more of Germany's troops and resources and the British were already planning the invasion of occupied France even without US troop support (they had US logistical support even without the US entry into the war). The US ended the war much sooner than it would have otherwise, and probably dramatically changed the level of Communist influence in the outcome, but Germany was doomed either way.

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    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  69. In other news..... by Nonillion · · Score: 1

    In other news, it was reported that top officials of the RIAA and the MPAA were planning aggressive litigation to halt this progress citing 'Won't someone please think of the rampant piracy this technology will foster'. 'We believe that consumers cannot be allowed access to this kind of bandwidth'.

    --
    "I bow to no man" - Riddick
  70. there were thousands of tons of supplies to russia by CFD339 · · Score: 1

    sent via arctic North Atlantic ports. These routes were under constant threat by U-boats. Its a fascinating story, by the way. The question of Russia having the shear mass of humans to swamp the Germans is interesting. Without food, both sides were starving and the most likely outcome would have been an unfinished war settled by disease as had WWI.

    --
    The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
  71. //40 rods to the hogshead... by fuego451 · · Score: 1

    Hmmm, 40 rods = 1 furlong but what I can't get is how many hoofbeats/furlong would that be?

  72. doesn't work! by conJunk · · Score: 1

    you have take into account the time to load/unload the truck

    there's no way a truck full of DVDs competes, even if it *does* use spindles

  73. Cable company conflict of interest by zymano · · Score: 1

    DSL stinks and Cable Co's aren't interested in providing more unless there's more competition.

    This is public muni FTTH FIOS is important . More transmission speed and better value.

    The cable co's don't want anything to compete against their channels. That would be stupid. They are holding everyone back.

    The internet backbone also doesn't want more transmission speed. They are just phone companies that want to gouge people.

    If we could bypass all of them with a national fiber network.........

    1. Re:Cable company conflict of interest by cnerd2025 · · Score: 1

      Doesn't seem like a problem to me. Here in VA ("Commonwealth" USA), the state has begun the process of deregulating cable and allowing for competition. As soon as the state lawmakers began the discussion, Cox, the local cable provider, began providing new "services" for free. Coincidence? Capitalism wins the day...

    2. Re:Cable company conflict of interest by slothman32 · · Score: 1

      Hows come most deregulation, e.g. capitalization, decreases competition?
      And no I don't have specific cases, just anecdotes.
      I have more of them than ones of your cases of which I have none, or rather one, yours.

      --
      Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
  74. Re:Digg Loses by Suddenly_Dead · · Score: 1
    Why, might I ask, was this rated flamebait? He's got a good point, and the post doesn't read like flamebait at all.

    And just to back that post up, here's the first page of Digg right now:

    • Top 10 Strangest Computer Mice (with Pics)
    • DeviantArt reaches 20,000,000 deviations.
    • U.S. Planning Base on Moon To Prepare for Trip to Mars
    • CNN's New Layout
    • Want free satellite TV?
    • Upload a picture and AMD/HP donates $1 to Lance Armstrong Foundation
    • How To Program Windows Screensavers
    • Life without a Mouse - Keyboard's Glory (Great Tips!)
    • How to tell if you're an Apple Fanatic.
    • Googles hires Vim author
    • AJAX Site Design using Prototype
    • Sony Blu Ray Caught on Video!
    • Apple Mac Computers will be in all Irish primary schools by 2007!
    • al-Qaeda's hacker caught; 'Terrorist 007', Exposed
    • Who's Building the Next Web? - Digg is one of them!!! (according to Newsweek)


    There is an incredibly poor signal to noise ratio there. I'm counting at least 8 articles that are pretty much useless, and three more that I would just skip over personally. Terrific.
  75. Re:Digg Loses by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 1

    Thank you. And I was also talking about "Diggall", which is the only way to see the newer ones when they're first posted, which has more noise than the front page. Most of the front page stuff is at least peripherally interesting, but trying to get to the new stories is hard until they get dugg to the front page, by which point it's been a few hours. I wouldn't use either Slashdot or Digg for breaking news, and Slashdot has much better commentary.

  76. Which did they do? by Gonoff · · Score: 1

    Did they mean 2.56 terrabits or 2,560,000,000,000 bits? Unless you are a hard disc seller or unclear on your units, the two are very different.

    Let me say that I am one of those tiresome people who think that there are 1,024 bits in a kilobit, 1,024 kilobits in a megabit and so on. KiB and its relatives are just an invention dsigned to confuse people and they serve no real purpose.

    2,560,000,000,000 bits is about 2.32 terrabits and 2.56 terrabits is 2,814,749,767,107 bits. The two are not the same.

    It's a bit like saying my cars top speed is 140 MPH or 287 KPH because car manufacturers have decided to redefine the kilometre. You can't. 1 Mile = 1.609 Km so my car does 225KM/hr.

    Fellow geeks and pedants, let us get this right!

    End pointless rant...

    --
    I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
  77. whopppeee, when can we expect AT+T to deploy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All those tera-bits and we're still in lagggg-lands for years to come

  78. simple math by 3.09+a+hour · · Score: 2, Funny

    lets see, the new record is 60 DVD/s "ordinary" lines come in at 50 times slower, so still well over 1 dvd/second 60/50=x x=ludicrus speed Hey bob, uhh we need to move all of the internet to my house... and back again, by tues.

    --
    Like the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -Pyrotic
  79. Re:there were thousands of tons of supplies to rus by swillden · · Score: 1

    Cool. I haven't read about that; I'll have to look it up. Do you have any recommendations? Thanks.

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    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  80. start with the wikipedia entry by CFD339 · · Score: 1



    There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945 (although there were two gaps with no sailings between July and September 1942, and March and November 1943). At first, the convoys sailed from Iceland but after September 1942 they assembled and sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland. The route was around occupied Norway to the Soviet ports and was particularly dangerous due to the proximity of German air, submarine and surface forces and also because of the severe weather.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_convoys_of_Wor ld_War_II

    --
    The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
  81. What kind of DVD ? BluRay ? by javaDragon · · Score: 2, Informative
    2.5 TB, 60 DVD ?
    Let's see...
    # rpncalc
    rpncalc version 1.35. Copyright (c) 1993-2004 David Frey et. al.
    This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
    For details, type `warranty'.
    Type `quit' to quit and `?' to get a summary.
    2.5 1024 dup dup * * *
    1: 2684354560
    60 /
    1: 4.474e+07
    1024 dup * /
    1: 42.67
    Well, Unless DVD can contain more that 40 GB of data (BluRay ?), there is a possibility of overflow in submitter's calculations.
    My guess is that it's more like the quivalent of 600 DVD per second which has been transmitted.
    --
    -- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
    1. Re:What kind of DVD ? BluRay ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2.56 Tera BITS is 298 Giga BYTES, or rougly 60 DVDs.