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Researchers Break Internet Speed Records

Posted by Zonk on from the hey-you-yeah-you-using-firefox-pull-over dept.

MosiMosi wrote to let us know about a new development on the Internet2 front. Researchers in Tokyo have advanced the speed of the network, breaking records twice in two days back in December of last year. "On Dec. 30 [researchers] sent data at 7.67 gigabits per second, using standard communications protocols. The next day, using modified protocols, the team broke the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile path at 9.08 Gbps. That likely represents the current network's final record because rules require a 10 percent improvement for recognition, a percentage that would bring the next record right at the Internet2's current theoretical limit of 10 Gbps."

140 comments

  1. Why is the theoretical limit 10 Gbps? by msauve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't they have redundant paths? Can't they use ECMP? (I'm assuming that the "limit" is referring to 10 Gbps max link speed)

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:Why is the theoretical limit 10 Gbps? by Anon-Admin · · Score: 5, Funny

      I am sorry, the budget was cut and we had to eliminate the redundant paths. It was too costly and as such we expect you figure out how to get the full 10Gbps out of the single T1 line. Please have the proposal ready by tomorrow, and remember that any solution you come up with should cost no more than your time. Oh, and we are a Windows only shop so you can not suggest OSS solutions.

      Thank you,
          Your Management.

    2. Re:Why is the theoretical limit 10 Gbps? by mythar · · Score: 1

      one word: marketing.

  2. But... by i.r.id10t · · Score: 5, Funny

    But can they beat a station wagon full of backup tapes (or DVDs or whatever) yet?

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    1. Re:But... by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 2, Funny

      Clearly, they must have used very sturdy tubes for this project. Therefore, you could take those same tubes and create tunnels to cross the oceans, which would allow a station wagon full of DVDs to drive around the world. Therefore, it will *always* be impossible to beat the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes or DVDs, because the station wagon will just rise with the tide.

      --
      Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
    2. Re:But... by ect5150 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Across a 20,000-mile path, I'm starting to bet on the network.

      --
      I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
    3. Re:But... by presarioD · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But can they beat a station wagon full of backup tapes (or DVDs or whatever) yet?

      Hmmm, let's see: Let's have maximum capacity DVD's at 9GB and for the sake of this exercise let's say the station wagon's capacity is 1000 DVDs so we have 9000GB moving around. Let's say the 20,000 mile distance will be covered at top speed (breaking speed limits in all states) at 100miles/h that results in 200 hours of deliverance time so:

      station wagon data speed = 9000 GB / 200 hours = 45 GB / hour = 0.0125 GB / sec = 0.1 Gbit / sec

      Nope the Japanese win!

      --
      Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
    4. Re:But... by goddidit · · Score: 1

      It's all about pipelining the station wagons.

      --
      This .sig is exactly 120 characters long.
    5. Re:But... by toleraen · · Score: 1

      0.1 Gbit/sec is still a whole lot faster than my Comcast connection...where can I sign up for the station wagon?

    6. Re:But... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Informative

      Let's see... A DVD has 3.76e10 bits. If you drove 20,000 miles at 70mph, that would take 1.03e6 seconds. So each DVD in the wagon would give you about 37Kb/s bandwidth. So you'd need about 248,000 DVDs in the car. My little postal scale here says that a DVD in a paper sleeve weighs in at 20g, so you'd need almost 5000kg of DVDs, which is probably too much for a station wagon. You could probably manage the task with BluRay or HD-DVD, though.

    7. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yeah, but the station wagon has MUCH higher latency (or is Comcast that bad?)

    8. Re:But... by Lost+Race · · Score: 1

      How many DVDs can you carry in a station wagon? 50000? That would be about 400 TB of data. At 9 Gbps they could push about 80 TB per day. They're pushing that data 20000 miles, which is farther than a station wagon can go in 5 days, so it's Internet2 FTW. Even for short trips I think the station wagon would lose once you add in the media transfer time, unless of course data on DVD was what you wanted anyway.

      (My calculations suggest you'd hit the weight limit of the station wagon before filling it up with DVDs. Is there some more mass-efficient storage medium?)

    9. Re:But... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Is there some more mass-efficient storage medium?)

      My guess for the best today is MicroSD. It would be horrendously expensive, but you can get 2GB MicroSD cards. You'd have to amass a lot of MicroSD cards to have the same mass as a CD and it takes only five of them to out-store a dual layer DVD.

      It would take some 25 of them to equal a Blu-Ray disc. Not sure which would win that competition.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:But... by toleraen · · Score: 1

      I can deal with the latency...I just can't wait to see the look on my friends faces when a station wagon pulls up to my apartment to deliver 1000 DVDs!

    11. Re:But... by maynard · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's just the fake wood paneling causing too much air friction. Rip that stuff out and you'll get 0.10000100 Gbps, no prob.

    12. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The article was about bandwidth, not latency. What you've proven is that the latency is about 200 hours (admittedly not ideal, especially when playing an FPS), but you've said nothing about bandwidth. Consider, for example, you could have a convoy of station wagons going down the highway. If we're truly measuring bandwidth, then the number of station wagons should have no effect.

      The bandwidth problems associated with a station wagon full of DVDs, to me, involve: burning the DVDs, putting them in their cases, carrying them out to the station wagon, parking the station wagon, carrying the DVDs to the destination computer, putting them in the DVD player tray and reading them. These are the factors that are constant with respect to the number of station wagons and the latency.

      Ignoring the maximum read/write capabilities of the computers involved, I think the bottlenecks would be physically opening the DVD jewel cases, putting them in the DVD player, and taking them back out. Probably this would take about 10 seconds per disc? That gives a bandwidth of .9GB/sec (7Gbit/sec).

      Sadly the Japanese still win :(

      This is actually quite frightening. The bandwidth these guys are playing with is about on par with the bandwidth of DVDs, even when totally ignoring how long it takes to read from or write to the DVDs.

    13. Re:But... by Obyron · · Score: 5, Funny

      Au contraire!

      Your capacity estimate is way, way too low. My DVD test samples can get 15 discs in a space 1"x5"x5" (e.g., 25in^3). There are 1728in^3 in a cubic foot, which translates to about 69 such stacks, for a total of 1035 discs per cubic foot. With its rear seat folded down the 2008 Volkswagen Jetta SportsWagen has 66.9ft^3 of storage space (source). We'll call it 67ft^3 for the sake of the math, and assume that you've crammed a few discs in the glovebox. This brings us to a total of 69,345 discs in our datawagon. If we use dual layer blu-ray discs at 50gb/disc that comes to 3.07 petabytes (x10^15). I'll use your 200 hour delivery time, which means we have an overall speed of 269.09GB/s (3467250000000000 bytes / 12000 seconds). You can keep your internet2, although I -will- cede that it gets better gas mileage.

      I would like to posit a new theorum: Advances in storage space and vehicle capacity will always increase such that a sufficiently well-fueled station wagon will have faster throughput than the latest advances in network architecture.

      --
      --Obyron
    14. Re:But... by insane_coder · · Score: 1

      If you take into the account the time it takes to burn all those DVDs, then yes I think the storage media in a vehicle method was beaten a long time ago.

      --
      You can be an insane coder too, read: Insane Coding
    15. Re:But... by Rolgar · · Score: 1

      And this doesn't include the time to get the data from the drive to the network (burning the disks), or get them in the transport medium (load the car), and then unload and put each disk in the drive and remove the data at the other end. Each of those data transfers alone would be slower than this rate of copy. You'd have to seriously parallel copy the data, and get a much faster transport, like a jet to compete with physical transport over this distance. Of course, nothing but data center hardware would be able to keep up with this sort of transfer at either end.

    16. Re:But... by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you are going to use throughput it probably gets a bit scary; raw bandwidth, sure, but I can click send faster than you can burn your blu-ray discs. Your throughput is limited to some multiple of the fastest burner money can buy. If you magic 10x blu-ray burners into existence, you would only need a dozen or so to keep up with the network(of course, you have to go way, way faster than the network because you have all that dead time while you bring the discs over to your readers at the other end of the transmission). And they did it with a good installed circuit, which may or may not represent the latest advances in network architecture.

      Here's a good theorem though: People care a lot more about latency than bandwidth.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    17. Re:But... by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 1

      Which is great until you factor in error rate/recovery time(1 bad sector on disk = 1 new trip. yes you could burn parity data too, but then you need to copy a lot more data at once).
      Then theres rate it takes to burn and store disks, and get them all back into a computer on the other end (disk read rate + rate to unpack and move N thousand disks).

      Networks already much faster once you factor that in.

      And of course theres the fact that this multi-gigabit link doesn't need 3.07 petabytes to reach maximum speed. If you only had a 20 gigs or so to move around, this would do it in seconds instead of hours. Then theres streaming multiple angles of hidef video..

      Hey, if everyone else can take the joke too far by bringing math in, someone should at least get to defend the other side.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    18. Re:But... by borizz · · Score: 1

      Genoot u van het vertalen van mijn handtekening?
      Nee.
    19. Re:But... by SETIGuy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hmmm, let's see: Let's have maximum capacity DVD's at 9GB and for the sake of this exercise let's say the station wagon's capacity is 1000 DVDs so we have 9000GB moving around. Let's say the 20,000 mile distance will be covered at top speed (breaking speed limits in all states) at 100miles/h that results in 200 hours of deliverance time so:

      station wagon data speed = 9000 GB / 200 hours = 45 GB / hour = 0.0125 GB / sec = 0.1 Gbit / sec

      You are mixing up latency with bandwidth. The latency (round trip time) of the connection here is 400 hours. The bandwidth (i.e. data rate) is the amount of data divided by the time it takes for the data to travel its own length.

      At 100 mph, a station wagon will travel its length in 0.14 seconds. So the bandwidth of a stationwagon packed with 9000 GB of data is about 550 Tbps.

      Given a train of station wagons running at 100mph, you could sustain that. Of course with 1440000000 ms ping times, I wouldn't try playing Battlefield 2 over that connection.

      Seriously, the distinction is important. If you included transit time when calculating bandwidth, the theoretical maximum bandwidth for a 12,000 bit packet on a 20,000 mile path would be 112 kbps.

      --
      Support SETI@home
    20. Re:But... by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      Which brings to mind an excellent question: Why burn the disks at all? Why not just disconnect the drive and put that in your station wagon?

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    21. Re:But... by BlueCollarCamel · · Score: 1

      What about double sided discs? :P

      --
      1&1 - Cheap domain and web hosting.
    22. Re:But... by bjorniac · · Score: 1

      "Of course with 1440000000 ms ping times, I wouldn't try playing Battlefield 2 over that connection."

      Obviously never had Verizon, have you?

    23. Re:But... by vonsneerderhooten · · Score: 1

      exactly. Transporting it there is one thing. Reading it back is an entirely different animal. The beauty of networks is that theyre so goddamned direct. it's just disk>network>disk instead of disk>disc>car>disk. And what if you've got wikipedia in the trunk? What do you do when someone edits a page?

    24. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      What's the power rating of the entire network path they took? Including point 1 plus point 2 plus every router on the way, I'd like to see how the kWh consumed of this transmission compares to the kWh consumed on the datawagen (using biodiesel or veggie oil of course). If the datawagen were 100% plug-in electric, what would its terabit-per-second-watt come out to? Interesting questions, all. I'd do the math myself, but don't feel like looking up the data :)

    25. Re:But... by markh1967 · · Score: 1

      Don't forget that you also need to add the time taken to write and read those 248,000 DVDs as well. "Insert DVD #148,256 and press any key to continue..."

      --
      Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
    26. Re:But... by mattmacf · · Score: 1

      If we use dual layer blu-ray discs at 50gb/disc that comes to 3.07 petabytes (x10^15). I'll use your 200 hour delivery time, which means we have an overall speed of 269.09GB/s (3467250000000000 bytes / 12000 seconds). You can keep your internet2, although I -will- cede that it gets better gas mileage.

      You sure have a funny definition of "hour." Last I checked, there were 3,600 seconds to an hour, not 60. Redoing your calculations with a value of 720,000 seconds gives us roughly 4.48GB/s or nearly 36Gbps. While this is still a good bit faster than the 9Gbps demonstrated by this Internet2, however, researchers believe that Internet8 is not far away and will roughly equal the total bandwidth of the current demonstration. Alternately, there's a senator from Alaska with a relatively large truck that can fit at far more than four Internets, thus surpassing your station wagon methods.

      Now I would also like to posit a theorem: Analogies that attempt to determine bandwidth rates in volkswagen beetles, station wagons of dvds or libraries of congress will inevitably fail due to a improper rounding or estimation, mistaken conversion, misplaced decimal points, or a fatal misunderstanding between the nature of bits and bites.

      QED
      --
      I only mod funny =D
    27. Re:But... by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 1

      Better yet use 2GB micro SD cards

    28. Re:But... by grommit · · Score: 1

      15 discs in 1"x5"x5" ? Those are some extremely thin cases you have for those DVDs.

      Remember, we are talking about data that we'd like to be able to read once the station wagon gets to its destination.

    29. Re:But... by The13thSin · · Score: 1

      True, but I think you'd lag behind in online gaming...

      --
      "This should be fun, and by fun, I mean a wholly depressing insight into the cognitive ability of some grown adults."
    30. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're sleeves. It's only a 20,000 mile trip! It's not like you're asking them to sit on a shelf without degrading for 10 years.

    31. Re:But... by Torvaun · · Score: 1

      I win, by using fundamental forces. I knocked a box full of hard drives off a desk. Gravity FTW.

      --
      I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
    32. Re:But... by Obyron · · Score: 1

      Actually you're right, I screwed up. I knew that somewhere in the midst of all that math I'd make some kind of mistake. To mitigate the damage, I offer the traditional sacrifice of a pop culture quote:

      "Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit! I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."

      --
      --Obyron
    33. Re:But... by echosilex · · Score: 1

      Have fun loading 70k discs into optical drives. For that matter, have fun writing 3PB to discs.

  3. Internet Causes Amnesia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting
    9 Gbps! What is the human visual nerve bandwidth? Much less I think. It is becoming our new external vision. Good or bad? It's tough to say. I think it is good, but who knows... ;)

    From the "Internet Causes Amnesia?":

    "..the brain uses sight as the external memory, so it adapted not to spend effort to memorize what it is seeing."

    http://thedialogs.org/2007/04/19/internet-causes-a mnesia/

  4. almost but not quite by treeves · · Score: 2, Informative

    9.08 * 1.1 = 9.988

    --
    ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
  5. Down the tubes. by FMota91 · · Score: 0

    It's spring, so water comes down the tubes faster.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
  6. and so when your staff sends you an e-Mail... by Glowing+Fish · · Score: 5, Funny

    So with this newer, faster internet, when your staff sends you an e-Mail at 10 AM Friday, you don't have to wait over the weekend to get it?

    --
    Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
    1. Re:and so when your staff sends you an e-Mail... by 0racle · · Score: 3, Funny

      Depends on if it gets to take the first class or economy class tubes.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    2. Re:and so when your staff sends you an e-Mail... by zCyl · · Score: 4, Funny

      when your staff sends you an e-Mail at 10 AM Friday

      Your staff doesn't send email. They send internets.
    3. Re:and so when your staff sends you an e-Mail... by Glowing+Fish · · Score: 1

      I checked the quote before I posted, but then forgot it...but I guess, even trying for cheap humor on Slashdot, I couldn't make myself write something as stupid as "send an internets to me"

      --
      Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
    4. Re:and so when your staff sends you an e-Mail... by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      but I guess, even trying for cheap humor on Slashdot, I couldn't make myself write something as stupid as "send an internets to me"

      On Soviet Slashdot, we send Internets to YOU.

  7. Limit by Ginger_Chris · · Score: 1

    Why is there a limit, surely they can just build wider pipes?

    1. Re:Limit by Vo1t · · Score: 1

      wider tubes, you meant?

  8. Senator Stevens ... by Bearpaw · · Score: 1

    Senator Stevens will be so happy to hear that they can speed up the tubes.

    1. Re:Senator Stevens ... by milgr · · Score: 1

      Lubricating the tubes with flat water really sped them up.

      --
      Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
  9. Improvement by pizzach · · Score: 3, Funny

    On Dec. 30 [researchers] sent data at 7.67 gigabits per second, using standard communications protocols Yes, the internet seems to be getting faster bit by bit.

    Ha ha ha *snort* I beat myself up.
    --
    Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
  10. tubes? by TinBromide · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe if they moved from a series of tubes to parallel tubes, they'd get a higher current flow...

    --
    Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
  11. We need a real alternative to the internet. by zymano · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A backbone not owned by the phone companies would reduce prices. An alternative that that doesn't rely on the robberbaron phone and cable companies for the last mile(wimax?).

    Something that allows for video like Iptv would be big.

    It would be more disruptive than the current net because then you could attend classes from home.

    This would be great for the economy too.

    1. Re:We need a real alternative to the internet. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      If you could just actually use multicast reliably on the internet, you could save an absolute assload of bandwidth, especially with intelligent caching, and/or short start delays so that you only have to distribute a maximum of (length of film / length of start delay) streams.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:We need a real alternative to the internet. by ckdake · · Score: 1

      So who is going to pay for this alternative? Some of the costs include: -land right of way (railroad companies became telco companies and have right of way between major cites which lets them bury the fiber where they want) (ever priced buying rights to a 10 foot wide strip of land from Atlanta to Dallas?) -burying the fiber -routers that go at these speeds (Ever priced a router that will do a few 10GbE interfaces at wire speed?) -power/cooling/squarefeet/etc in datacenters -people do do and manage all of this This also brings us to: -Isn't whoever does all of this going to want to make money off of it? -Won't multiple providers running links over multiple paths mean higher costs for everyone due to the infrastructure costs involved?

    3. Re:We need a real alternative to the internet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, yea, a NEW BACKBONE sounds really cheap. I'm sure you could dig some trenches and lay a new fiber backbone from LA to NY in a couple weeks at most, maybe set you back a few thousand.

      Boy, wouldn't you look like the real smartypants then?

      Hint: The astronomical costs involved in laying fiber would mean that any new backbones would be subsidized by the early adopters, which means no money saved. Even 'lighting up' existing dark fiber is expensive, as it requires a lot of infrastructure. Quite amazingly, the companies best equipped to build/maintain these networks are... Telcos!!!

    4. Re:We need a real alternative to the internet. by The13thSin · · Score: 1

      Nice idea, but I think you're over estamating the costs. Currently 24Mbps ADSL costs about 20 euro (= about 25 dollar) a month here in the Netherlands... so either I have holes in my pockets and I don't think that's that expensive, or it's just the latter...

      So just maybe, the costs aren't as high as they seem... it's just that companies are charging much more, dependant on the demand of high speed connections in a certain country. ... Hooray for capitalism! (No, I'm not a "socialist", just think you'll have to wait untill the highend demand become mainstream in any country where the price is too high...)

      --
      "This should be fun, and by fun, I mean a wholly depressing insight into the cognitive ability of some grown adults."
  12. Obligatory Simpsons quote by smooth+wombat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Marge: "Does anyone need that much porn?"

    Homer (drooling): "One million times faster...."

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  13. Gee I'm impressed... by spydum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd be more impressed if they DIDN'T modify the TCP stack, and used the PUBLIC Internet. Internet2 is far from a real production network. I'm sure if I ran 40,000 miles of fiber and interconnected two idle routers and modified my TCP stack to handle massive window sizes and other tweaks, I could get nearly the full line rate, at twice the distance.

    1. Re:Gee I'm impressed... by powerpants · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm sure if I ran 40,000 miles of fiber and interconnected two idle routers and modified my TCP stack to handle massive window sizes and other tweaks, I could get nearly the full line rate, at twice the distance. And if you had, we'd be talking about it.
    2. Re:Gee I'm impressed... by porpnorber · · Score: 1

      Well, the article is spectacularly under-informative. In our experience (yeah, yeah, been there, done that, got an award at Supercomputing...), the hard part is the last few inches. It is (or I should say, 18 months ago it was - maybe by now you can get all the peripherals you need in PCIe?) hard to get more than a few Gbps in and out of a workstation. We ran about 4.5Gbps per direction across North America in '05, but it took three workstations at each end, essentially because DMA over PCI-X is in practise much more limiting than UDP/IP over lightpath.

      But from TFA you can't tell: maybe the endpoints are rackfulls of dedicated hardware and they run multiple TCP streams run in parallel, in which case I have to agree that that doesn't seem like much of a trick at all. In any case, some tuning has to be forgiven: the bandwidth-delay product on these runs is on the order of a gigabit, and, well, your stack isn't tuned for that, out of the box.

      As to running over the public Internet, been there, done that, too. As a consequence of some unscheduled maintenance, we got dumped onto the public 'net one day. What actually happens is, they decide you're a DOS attack and they block you! Surprise! Bad research project, no record!

    3. Re:Gee I'm impressed... by alienmole · · Score: 1

      As to running over the public Internet, been there, done that, too. As a consequence of some unscheduled maintenance, we got dumped onto the public 'net one day. What actually happens is, they decide you're a DOS attack and they block you! Surprise! Bad research project, no record!
      That seems reasonable. Imagine one of those rocket cars that break speed records on salt pans, trying to do 500mph on the New Jersey Turnpike instead. The cops would pull it over in a heartbeat, if they could catch it. (I hear New Jersey Governor Corzine tried something similar.)

      In any case, some tuning has to be forgiven: the bandwidth-delay product on these runs is on the order of a gigabit, and, well, your stack isn't tuned for that, out of the box.
      So when you put on the brakes, you don't stop right away. Car metaphors are great! Who needs tubes?
    4. Re:Gee I'm impressed... by The13thSin · · Score: 1

      And not just about the bps... but damn... running 40,000 miles? ... that's just... damn...

      --
      "This should be fun, and by fun, I mean a wholly depressing insight into the cognitive ability of some grown adults."
  14. This just in.. by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Funny

    Internet2 has just gone even faster, breaking the speed of light.

    An email has just been sent to a researcher on ARPANET in 1972, who unfortunately doesn't know what "v1@gr@" is or why he would want to "enlarge pens" with it.

    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
    1. Re:This just in.. by eimsand · · Score: 1

      That was easily the funniest thing I've read all day.

    2. Re:This just in.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hahaha!!!! that was awesome!

  15. High quality movies! by smitty97 · · Score: 5, Funny
    from TFA:

    With the 10-fold increase, a high-quality version of the movie "The Matrix" could be sent in a few seconds rather than half a minute...
    Efforts to make a high quality version of "The Matrix Revolutions" have not succeeded in any time frame.
    --
    mod me funny
    1. Re:High quality movies! by VinB · · Score: 0

      I disagree with the *initial* premise of a high-quality version of The Matrix.

    2. Re:High quality movies! by Fozzyuw · · Score: 1

      With the 10-fold increase, a high-quality version of the movie "The Matrix" could be sent in a few seconds rather than half a minute...

      So... it's going a few seconds faster than a few seconds?

      --
      "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
  16. this is meaningless by hyperstation · · Score: 0

    tell me how much it is in LOCPS (Libraries of Congress Per Second)

    1. Re:this is meaningless by Daath · · Score: 1

      I'd guess around 0.00005 of them per second... LC is supposed to be around 20 TB in digitized form.

      --
      Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
    2. Re:this is meaningless by HolyCrapSCOsux · · Score: 1

      Is that all?

      I wonder what the size of all of the knowledge that mankind has at this moment is?
      6 billion people * 20TB = 12 x 10^10 TB = = 1.05553116 × 10^23 bits

      so...

      3,115,132 years to send a copy of the library of congress to everyone.

      --
      0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
    3. Re:this is meaningless by Urza9814 · · Score: 1

      Ahh, but that is assuming you only have one centralized server. If you used a P2P approach, you could probably cut it down to a few thousand years. Of course, you still have to get everyone a connection first....

  17. New Speed Record? by Anon-Admin · · Score: 2

    There 9.06Gbps is a speed record???

    Ummm, OC-192 is 9.6Gbps I think they are a little shy of the speed record. Maybe I missed something.

    1. Re:New Speed Record? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1

      IIRC they're talking about a goodput speed record, not about line rates.

    2. Re:New Speed Record? by tomstdenis · · Score: 4, Informative

      As I understand it, this is over one link. OC-192 is actually a series of OC-48 links bonded together.

      Heck you can get yourself a nice 10gbit/sec line with 10 1gbit lines, ooh la lah

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    3. Re:New Speed Record? by Zenzilla · · Score: 1

      oc-192 is link bundled. I'm assuming this is over a single link.

    4. Re:New Speed Record? by ziegast · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ummm, OC-192 is 9.6Gbps I think they are a little shy of the speed record. Maybe I missed something.

      Within a data center or a metro area, it's commercially viable to pump tens of gigabits per second of bits from point A to point B using many parallel fiber circuits between the two locations. What makes the Internet2 land speed record (http://www.internet2.edu/lsr/) interesting is adding distance to the problem by multiplying the speed times the distance. The unit of measurement they use is "terabit-meters per second" (Tbmps?). The current record is 272,400 Tbmps, or ~9Gbps over 30000km (1km=1000000m). The transfer rate is really a function of 1) latency adjustments in the data transfer protocol, 2) the minimum transfer speed capable between all points on the network (currently OC192=10Gbps), and 3) the speed of the sending and receiving computers. While OC192 might theoretically be 9.6Gbps, getting the various vendors
        switches on different continents to all send packets at line speed for a long period of time with minimal packet overhead can be challenging.

      What makes this pointless, though, is that the sending and receiving equipment is in the same location. In their documentation they send the bits from a computer in Tokyo through Chicago through Amsterdam and back through Seattle to the same lab in Tokyo. It would be much easier to put a 10GigE fiber between the two machines, but that's not he "point" of the exercise.

      Someone has to pay for this. Usually its the country's taxpayers or a company's stockholders.

      I'd much rather see benchmarks for transferring N terabytes of real data from one site with lots of disks to another far-away site with lots of disks. Real companies can use that data for pontificating disaster recovery and content/database replication technologies. I'd reckon that Google can beat the multiple stream Internet2 LSR any day they want by pumping petabytes of data between its data centers over multiple 10GigE backbones. Andy Tanenbaum's (or Hal Stern's?) station wagon full of tapes is also a fine competitor.

      -ez

    5. Re:New Speed Record? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quick correction: 1 km = 1000 m, not 1000000 m.

  18. Gee, no more speed records? by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 1

    Does this mean we won't be getting these bi-weekly updates on how Professor Wingwang from Xyzzy University has sent data at ridiculously high speeds over specialised networks using specialised hardware and specialised protocols?

    It's interesting the first time you hear that somebody has sent data at 346363GiB/s or whatever, but there's only so many times you can nod and think "how nice for them" until you start wondering why you're not hearing anything about what's being done to prevent the incapacitation of that "Internet 1" thing the rest of us chug along on.

    --
    Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
    1. Re:Gee, no more speed records? by biocute · · Score: 1

      Higher speed will be the cure. Just like standard government, the most effective way to fight traffic congestion is to build more and wider roads.

      Imagine what the internet will be like where all spams only counted for 0.01% of the total bandwidth? "They simply cannot breed spammers fast enough to saturate the lines."

      --
      Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
    2. Re:Gee, no more speed records? by Strilanc · · Score: 1

      I think you mean: Imagine the internet when spam consists of high-def videos involving enlargement.

    3. Re:Gee, no more speed records? by DrgnDancer · · Score: 1

      It's really not that specialized. Pretty much every large university in Louisiana is hooked up to this same network, and it's not as if we're like the cutting edge of technology here. I'm not talking "a few big iron systems in a a secluded data center on the campuses of the large universities in Louisiana" I had access to Internet2 on my regular work PC as a junior systems administrator at Tulane, 5 years ago. Made downloading distro .isos much faster (granted the LAN only did 100Mbps, but if that's the worst of your bottleneck...) The start facility I work for now has a 10 Gig-E hook up too, but that is mostly for big iron research machines.

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
  19. that's a lot of porn and spam by gelfling · · Score: 1

    isn't it?

  20. eheheheeheheh damn you ! by unity100 · · Score: 1

    you bastard

    --
    Read radical news here
  21. Never underestimate... by Daath · · Score: 5, Funny

    *Never* underestimate an Airbus A380-800F. It will carry a 150 tonne payload at 0.85 mach, 6500 miles before refueling. A Hitachi 7K1000 1TB drive weighs in at 700 g. That's around 210,000 TB. Flight at .85 mach will take about 30 hours, let's give them 10 hours for refuelling and maintenance. That's 40 hours. If I'm not mistaken, that's around 60 GB per second. What's that? Around half a TBps?

    Beat THAT Internet2!

    Feel free to correct my "calculations", as they weren't any such thing! :)

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
    1. Re:Never underestimate... by Hennell · · Score: 1

      Where a 40 hour rate to get 210,000 TB of information sounds good you have a slight flaw. It'd also take 40 hour rate to get 1 byte of information. Which as I download allot more things in the rate of the later I think I'd get bored waiting around...
      ---
      Contronyms: for people who are chuffed by antonyms
      ---

    2. Re:Never underestimate... by timmyd · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      But did you count the time it takes to load and unload the data off of those disk drives?

    3. Re:Never underestimate... by DrgnDancer · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Ahh, but you have to make time to get the data on and off of the tapes. After all this is a computer to computer transfer.

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
    4. Re:Never underestimate... by woodhouse · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not bad, but I'm not sure I'd want to play CS with that kind of ping.

    5. Re:Never underestimate... by Firehed · · Score: 0, Redundant

      The plane might be able to lift 210,000 drives, but my gut tells me that you'd have a hell of a time getting them all to fit in there...

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    6. Re:Never underestimate... by Nullav · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think I'd get bored waiting around...

      You look at a progress bar for entertainment?
      On a more serious note, you'd still get in one chunk, so the initial byte wouldn't matter.

      What we need to look at is Gigabits per dollar.
      Assuming that you were somehow blessed with an ISP that would let you download over a TB/month, and had a 5Mb/s connection (and assuming constant speed), it would take roughly 19.4 days to download.
      Assuming a 30-day month and that your ISP charged $40/month, it would come to $25.86 for that one transfer, which would be $0.000003/Mb.
      Shipping a 700g package to (anywhere in) Canada via USPS airmail (The Internet is international, after all.) would be $14.50. That comes to $0.000001/MB.

      Just my 0.0002 cents.
      --
      I just read Slashdot for the articles.
    7. Re:Never underestimate... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To continue the back of envelope math. You are correct in assuming that more data is transmitted, but to talk about bandwidth we need to see that data enter the remote machine. You have the time to install a hard drive, even a hot swappable one, and then you are limited by the transfer limit of the hard drive (which is the maximum data transfer limit anyways - stuff dumped to RAM doesn't really count).

      Consider an extra 2 minutes per TB to unpack and install the drive. You're speed falls a little there.

      With a network connection you can be sending and receiving from datacentres with massive network RAIDs - beat that Airbus!

      (unless you consider a UPS computer in the plane, but that is silly)

      PS /me concedes that the bandwidth of the aircraft is probably more in the end anyways.

    8. Re:Never underestimate... by TimToady · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's nothin'. Never underestimate the bandwidth of an Airbus full of station wagons...

    9. Re:Never underestimate... by Havenwar · · Score: 1

      I have a 10Mb/s (both ways) connection with a monthly cost of under $30. This is a step down from my previous ADSL (24Mb/s) when it comes to downlink speed, but a step up of course when it comes to uplink speed. And definitely a step down in price since the previous ADSL cost me around $60 a month.

      However, neither ISP has batted an eyelash at how much I have downloaded. And yes, depending on luck and quality of torrents, a terabyte takes typically less than two weeks to download.

      Conclusion?
      Move to Sweden. I don't know if broadband is cheaper than USPS here because I can't be bothered to do the numbers, but I bet you my ping wins.

    10. Re:Never underestimate... by Archtech · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but how long does it take to tear down the hardware before flight and reassemble it afterwards? And what is the error rate (mostly due to drives that don't work on arrival)?

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    11. Re:Never underestimate... by ohmpossum · · Score: 1

      If that fails, Man! Talk about a drive crash! Better have a back up plane.

      Ponders: If all the drives were spun up at once what kind of torque would that put on the plane?

      --
      Just set me up a basic sig... 10 PRINT "Gordon Aplin" : GOTO 10
  22. Assume 60 mph by benhocking · · Score: 2, Funny

    If we assume 60mph average speed for that trip, than a 20,000 mile trip will take 333 hours and 20 minutes or 1,200,000. At 9 GB/s, the network will have transferred 10,800 TB in that amount of time. Assuming dual-layer blu-ray DVDs, each with 50 GB (0.05 TB) of data, the station wagon will have to carry more than 216,000 DVDs for it to win. If each DVD takes up about 3.6 cubic inches (0.1x6x6) or 0.002 cubic feet, the station wagon will need to carry 432 cubic feet of DVDs.

    I think the network wins this one.

    --
    Ben Hocking
    Need a professional organizer?
    1. Re:Assume 60 mph by fireylord · · Score: 1, Funny

      ugh, imperial measurements. _so_ undigital.

    2. Re:Assume 60 mph by crazygamer · · Score: 1

      Get a life....

    3. Re:Assume 60 mph by HUADPE · · Score: 1

      If you use slip covers, the station wagon might have a chance. Probably ~.75 in^3

      --
      This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
    4. Re:Assume 60 mph by frenchbedroom · · Score: 1

      You must be new here.

  23. Airbus wins by benhocking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But the calculations do need correction. :) 210,000 TB in 40 hours = 1,458 GB/s or 1.458 TB/s.

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    Ben Hocking
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    1. Re:Airbus wins by Hossicle · · Score: 2, Funny

      During a recent attempt I got at least a transfer rate 2.1 TB/s through a common phone line.

      Unfortunately the data was just a big string of Zeros...

      Does that count? Great compression rate too!

  24. Here come the Library of Congress jokes by had3z · · Score: 1

    in 3, 2, 1...

    --
    funny pics
  25. 9 gigabits?! by linvir · · Score: 1

    What the fuck is this Internet2 thing anyway? Some kind of big truck?

    1. Re:9 gigabits?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you noob. It's an even bigger truck.

    2. Re:9 gigabits?! by Mikachu · · Score: 1

      No, it's, it's a series of tubes.

    3. Re:9 gigabits?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The tubes must really be clogged up today because that joke got old about six months ago. ;-)

    4. Re:9 gigabits?! by McFortner · · Score: 1

      Nah, just something Al Gore whipped up in his spare time....

      --
      Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
  26. This is great by eimsand · · Score: 1

    This is great! Does this means that my personal internet will be okay even if you put enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material in your personal internet? (Weak attempt at Sen. Stevens joke)

  27. no good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    until they stop shaping pr0n & p2p

  28. Re:Assume 60 mph and bytes not bits by Retric · · Score: 1

    9.08 (gigabits per second) * ((333 hours) plus (20 minutes)) = 1.29890442 petabytes
    not 10,800 TB.

    So it's ~54 cubic feet which would fit in "2008 Volkswagen Jetta SportsWagen has 66.9ft^3 of storage space"

    Or for more $$$

    2gb microSD card 15 mm × 11 mm × 0.7 mm or 1/243,242 cubic foot.
    2 * 243,242 GBytes = 475.082031 terabytes
    So 3 cubic feet gives you 1.39 petabytes.
    and 66.9ft^3 = 31 petabytes or ~23 times faster.

  29. And who is going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    to clean up all these broken records ?

    Litterers, y'r'all !

  30. Confusing bandwidth with latency... by SETIGuy · · Score: 1
    Everyone keeps confusing bandwidth with latency. The bandwidth is the amount of time it takes the data to travel its own length. The latency is the time it takes for the data to get from source to destination.

    At 0.85 mach, a A380 travels its own length in about 1/4 second. So the bandwidth of a A380 is 6720 Pbps. You only need 881,832 A380s to maintain that bandwidth over a 20000 mile course. How to get a 150 ton payload onto or off of an A380 in 0.25 seconds is left as an excercise for the network engineer.

    --
    Support SETI@home
    1. Re:Confusing bandwidth with latency... by alienmole · · Score: 2, Funny

      The bandwidth is the amount of time it takes the data to travel its own length.
      Wow, that makes it all so simple, thanks! Now I just have to measure how long this file I have is. I guess I have to print it out and use a ruler, but what font size should I use? This network design stuff is tricky!
    2. Re:Confusing bandwidth with latency... by Knetzar · · Score: 1

      Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be sent during a set period of time. Per second in this case.
      Latency is how quickly the smallest piece of information takes to be sent.

    3. Re:Confusing bandwidth with latency... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just count the packets, its 3ft/pkt on the wire

  31. Pr0n by TheLoneWolf071 · · Score: 1

    Ah.... finally pr0n at the speed of human.

  32. Buy now! by ATMD · · Score: 1

    The problem is friction. What they've done now is applied our new network smoothening paste, TubeLube!
    Preorder your shipment today!

    --
    Nobody else has this sig.
  33. I stand by my calculations (this time, at least) by benhocking · · Score: 1

    333.3 hours = 20,000 minutes = 1.2 million seconds.
    1.2 million seconds x 9 GB/s = 10.8 PB.
    1.2 million seconds x 9.08 GB/s = 10.896 PB.
    Where are you getting 1.29890442 PB from?

    --
    Ben Hocking
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  34. faster than light speed? by seven+of+five · · Score: 1

    According to my calc's, the fastest I can send one bit 20,000 miles is in 107 milliseconds. Now how do these yahoo's come up with 9 Gb/s??

    1. Re:faster than light speed? by Mr+EdgEy · · Score: 1

      All of the data is sent in a chunk. What you need to look at is how 'long' this information has to travel to have gone its own length, then add that to 107ms.

    2. Re:faster than light speed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the second bit leaves before the first one gets where it's going. Think about it for a second. You're just telling me about the latency, not the transmission rate.

  35. Yet it doesn't help that much for latency... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If I wanted to send one bit 20.000 miles away, it would take, what, 150 ms?

    It's funny to see that a broadband user located in a big european city, say Paris, has today a pretty optimal "ping" time when pinging a server located in, say, New York.

    Sure, there are a few ms lost here and there but overall the major limiting factor when doing such a cross-atlantic ping is the speed of light (major limiting factor as in "contributing to at least 95% of the time taken when doing such an exercise) [insert joke about lame ISPs here].

    This means that even in a hundred year a user playing a FPS in L.A. won't have a low ping when playing against someone in Europe... Unless a major discovery takes place.

  36. size of a byte, and storage capacity of the net by rmelton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With simple assumptions and google calculator

    c / 9.08e9 bits per second =
        the speed of light / (9.08e9 (bits per second)) = 0.264134324 m / Byte

    20000 miles / (c / 9.08e9 bits per second) =
      (20 000 miles) / (c / (9.08e9 (bits per second))) = 116.212843 megabytes

    So bytes are 26 centimeters long, and the network holds 116MB in transit.

  37. Depend if you do a google or not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shipping containers with servers inside. Of course its a few less drives. Or shiping contatiners on with prewired ata over ethernet so its just pull them out and apply power and connections and run. Of course you would not be putting them in one at a time. Somewhere between 1000 to about 50000 at a time.

    What would be wrong if you could workout how to have a sat link operational in fight rsyncing changes.

    Yes the big airbus hold a lot.

  38. Other breaking news by mrbluze · · Score: 1
    • Researchers Break Internet Ice & Coke Records, since they ran out of Speed.
    Ok, I need sleep.
    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
  39. so where are the cops by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 1

    on the information superhighway? I'm pretty sure that's above the speed limit...

  40. Re:I stand by my calculations (this time, at least by 6th+time+lucky · · Score: 1

    hmmm, not the only thing wrong at google this week...

  41. 100 Gigabit already achieved! by Adeptus_Luminati · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why is this "10G" even news? 10 Gigabit (OC192) Has been around since at least 1999. In fact, engineers & scientists already have functioning proto-types of 100 Gigabit over fiber (basically DWDM - multiple colours of 10 Gigabit streams multiplexed).

    The IEEE expects the standard to be ratified in mid 2008 for the fiber version & copper (CAT8?) to come out within a couple of years after that (late 2009 or 2010).

    Siemens achieves 111 Gigabits over 2,400 kilometers
    http://presszoom.com/story_127837.html

    Bell & Lucent labs acheive 107 Gigabits over 2,000 kilometers
    http://www.enterprisenetworksandservers.com/monthl y/art.php?2642

    Wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_gigabit_Ethernet

    Those Internet2 people are just a tad behind... like 10 fold! If Internet2 = 10G, and Internet3 =100G, then really those Internet2 people should be working on Internet4 (Terabit baby!)!

    Adeptus

    --
    No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
    1. Re:100 Gigabit already achieved! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a big difference between the theoretical bandwidth and what is achievable in practice. The network is not and has not been the bottleneck for a long time. The end host and the protocols are where the (show stopping) action is at. I speak from experience as a member of the team that helped set the Internet2 Land Speed Record a few years ago.

      [A healthy dose of scepticism is good, but it pays to remember that not all problems have been solved. Otherwise, when do I get my personal jet pack?]

      -J.D.

  42. No, OC-192 is not a "bundle..." by msauve · · Score: 1

    it's a single logical link. Perhaps you're confused because the STS hierarchy packs 4 OC-48's into an OC-192, just like there are 24 DS-0s in a DS-1.

    If one is willing to consider multiple links running on a single physical one (i.e. DWDM fiber), 72 x 10 Gbps is possible. If multiple physical links are allowed, then the limit becomes financial/practical.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  43. pft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    look at speeds that i achieve with my pitiful 768Kbit dsl
    http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/651/zomgbj4.png

  44. Well, at least that explains that by benhocking · · Score: 1

    I can't fault you too much for trusting Google.

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    Ben Hocking
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    1. Re:Well, at least that explains that by Retric · · Score: 1

      No trust in google
      333.3 hours = 20,000 minutes = 1.2 million seconds. (check)
      1.2 million seconds x 9 GBits/s = 10.8 PBbits. (check)
      1.2 million seconds x 9.08 GBits/s = 10.896 PBbits.(check)
      10.8 PetaBits / (8bits /byte) = 1.35 PetaBytes (ahh there it is.)

      Note: Bandwith is in bits, storage is in bytes.

  45. What's that smell? by benhocking · · Score: 1

    It smells kind of like a new meme...

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  46. I'll put my money on the network... by Cheezymadman · · Score: 0

    At least until the station wagon gets up to around 7500 rpm. Then Vtec kicks in, yo!

    --
    We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
  47. Conduit by Dareth · · Score: 1

    It is a big conduit to put your tubes in.

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  48. Awesome by benhocking · · Score: 1

    So, Google was right all along! I feel so bad for doubting...

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    Ben Hocking
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  49. 100 Gb?? by inquisitive123 · · Score: 1

    The article does nt give any clue as to how are they going to achieve 100Gb, which is definitely an awesome number..