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UK Research Aims For 100x Speedup In Fiber-Based Broadband

Posted by timothy on from the such-a-nice-round-number dept.

Mark.JUK writes "The UK governments Minister for Science, David Willetts, has awarded £7.2 million to help support the University of Southampton's newly rebuilt Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and the development ('Photonics HyperHighway') of new technologies that would be capable of making broadband internet access over fibre optic cables 100 times faster than today." What would you like to do with 100 times your own current network speed?

8 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Download more and more by SquirrelDeth · · Score: 4, Funny

    Linux iso's.

    1. Re:Download more and more by mangu · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd rather download better quality Linux isos. I think if I could get 720p Linux isos that would be great, but not every Linux iso is available at that resolution. Some are ripped from VHS and others from TV, I usually avoid those.

    2. Re:Download more and more by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Video on demand like YouTube and iplayer are driving bandwidth requirements up, not pirates.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Porn. by Grapplebeam · · Score: 3, Funny

    So much porn. I'd be downloading about one hundred times more than I do now.

    --
    There is no -1 Disagree.
  3. With speed like that... by Sam+Rodgers · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would spread the good word that people can increase their endurance with huge savings on enlargment pills!

  4. Nothing really. by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What would you like to do with 100 times your own current network speed?

    That would give me >2Gbit/s actual. I could stream what like 40 blurays simultaniously? Don't need it. Can't really imagine anyone who does, really. And I'd probably still be downloading from torrents because the TV/movie execs won't offer it here, no netflix, no hulu, no TV shows or movies on iTunes.

    And for most things like series I follow my computer could just download it encrypted the night before in maximum quality, then deliver the key at release time. Bandwidth is really not a problem, at least the pirates seem able to deliver so it's strange if a big company couldn't. Sure I'd still take more if I could but it's no longer a bit deal. Before this is I had 2 Mbit down and that was horrible.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  5. Holograms? by vrmlguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just a few hours ago, /. had this story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/01/29/2222246/A-Kinect-Princess-Leia-Hologram-In-Realtime. If you follow a few links, you eventually arrive at http://www.media.mit.edu/spi/M2.html, where you will find these bits of information:

    The resulting image is horizontal parallax only (HPO), with video resolution in the vertical direction, and holographic resolution in the horizontal direction.

    and

    The Holovideo Cheops system provides six synchronized frame buffers to drive our 256Kx144 display

    I infer that holographic resolution takes 1,000 times the bandwidth of conventional video. So, yeah, I think I can think of ways to use this much bandwidth at home.

    --
    Nothing for 6-digit uids?
  6. Re:hit your download usage limit as fast as possib by Rising+Ape · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are a fair few unlimited, or at least "unlimited for practical purposes" ISPs available. Sky or Be, for example. I downloaded 200 GB one month, no problems.

    The limited ones are generally the ones that use BT's backhaul from the exchange rather than doing their own (LLU), because BT charge a very high per-Mbps rate. Even then, it's enough for gaming.