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Research Scientists To Use Network Much Faster Than Internet

Posted by samzenpus on from the greased-lightning dept.

nickweller writes with this story from the Times about the Pacific Research Platform, an ultra-high-speed fiber-optic research infrastructure that will link together dozens of top research institutions. The National Science Foundation has just awarded a five-year $5 million dollar grant for the project. The story reports:The network is meant to keep pace with the vast acceleration of data collection in fields such as physics, astronomy and genetics. It will not be directly connected to the Internet, but will make it possible to move data at speeds of 10 gigabits to 100 gigabits among 10 University of California campuses and 10 other universities and research institutions in several states, tens or hundreds of times faster than is typical now.

3 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Pointless article by 3.14159265 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's Sunday night, so let's be picky:
    1) 10 or 100 gigabits is not a measure of speed.
    2) the "current" internet could very well exhibit the same capabilities if it didn't have to carry all the porn streaming left and right for millions of clients. A conventional network connection rated at xxx could run at that rate if you didn't have any sort of congestion, something this new network will likely not suffer because it doesn't have porn (yet). Any dedicated link will give you that. Heck, any 100Gb/s optical channel will give you 100Gb/s to play with.
    3) "designed with hardware security features to protect it from the attacks" from the "internet" - by not having a direct connection to the internet in the first place? Fancy words, but it'll do.
    4) $5 million to weave a cluster of fibers? Sounds too cheap.

    Finally, the article says that "the new network will also serve as a model for future computer networks", but doesn't say anything about protocols, routing, etc. Nothing.

    1. Re: Pointless article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's true. This is all BS. The internet is built on the same tech, it just has to service a lot more than ~20 locations. The internet in Japan has been at these speeds for a while.
      This is some Ministry of Truth shit I think. Some kind of brainwashing to make Americans accept when the internet doesn't get any cheaper but does get slower. It's going to happen. They are conditioning us! They must still be salty 'bout that denied merger.

  2. This sounds pathetic by strstr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Internet 2 was already supposed to be faster than the regular Internet.

    This announcement of 10Gbits to 100Gbits is not impressive .. that is a typical server connection these days.

    What would be impressive? Multiple terabits or even petabit network, dedicated to the schools, allowing each connected device maximum throughput simutaneously.