New internet speed record

[denoir 0]

CNN Article

Quote[/b] ]GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- Two major scientific research centres said on Wednesday they had set a new world speed record for sending data across the Internet, equivalent to transferring a full-length DVD film in seven seconds.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, said the feat, doubling the previous top speed, was achieved in a nearly 30-minute transmission over 7,000 kms of network between Geneva and a partner body in California.

CERN, whose laboratories straddle the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, said it had sent 1.1 Terabytes of data at 5.44 gigabits a second (Gbps) to a lab at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, on October 1.

This is more than 20,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, and is also equivalent to transferring a 60-minute compact disc within one second -- an operation that takes around eight minutes on standard broadband.

Using current technology, a DVD -- or digital video disc -- film of some 90 minutes length takes some 15 minutes to download from the Internet.

Olivier Martin of CERN, which is also the European Laboratory for Particle Physics and home to a hugely ambitious particle-smashing project to unravel the fundamental laws of nature, hailed the feat as a milestone.

It would bring closer researchers' final goal of abolishing distance and making collaboration between scientists around the world efficient and effectively instantaneous, he said.

Harvey Newman of Caltech, another of the world's major research centres, said the achievement boosted hopes that systems operating at 10 gigabits per second "will be commonplace in the relatively near future."

Related link: Pervious record

It's not bad. The previous record was at 923 Megabit/s, set in March, this year. The new one beats it by over five times.

Pretty nice when loading stuff from the network is faster than from your local hard drive.

[kegetys 2]

So much internet bandwidth wasted for just breaking a record :/

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]a lab at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, on October 1.

gotta admit that those geeks and nerds of Pasadena will be busy with downloading something useful.

[ralphwiggum 6]

So much internet bandwidth wasted for just breaking a record :/

oh look whose talking!

[theavonlady 2]

That would explain what held up my online shopping order today for 0.176248 seconds.

[waffendennis 0]

Lol I can see it:

Downloading OFP2 demo size: 400mb

And then in 2 seconds done

[kegetys 2]

So much internet bandwidth wasted for just breaking a record :/

oh look whose talking!

They waste so much and get to the news and I get stamped as a bandwidth hogger for watching a live stream of a space shuttle launch

[RED 0]

So much internet bandwidth wasted for just breaking a record :/

oh look whose talking!

They waste so much and get to the news and I get stamped as a bandwidth hogger for watching a live stream of a space shuttle launch        

Yes but I seem to remember you were watching it with more than one stream

Ontopic: Would we ever need this much bandwidth? If so what for?

RED

[Guest]

1.1 Terrabytes of pr0n.....hmmmm

[toadlife 3]

Ontopic: Would we ever need this much bandwidth? If so what for?

For the computers 15 years from now that have 1Thz processors and 10Gbps NICs of course!

I bet someone asked the same question back when we reached 1Mbit for the first time on the internet.

[shadow 6]

So much internet bandwidth wasted for just breaking a record :/

I have to agree with Keg here.

It would have been alot better if they just gave it to me

I only have 704/128  

Seriously though, I think internet-access will be more and more expensive over time. Sure, you get more bandwidth for your money compared to what you got in the past. But when the bandwidth increase, so does the server-requirements to keep up, and those expenses will be covered by you, the user

[denoir 0]

I'm a bit confused however. I'm on a 100 Mbit line as are the about 50 people that live in the same building or about 2-3000 that live in the same general area. Against other 100 Mbitters, I more or less always come up to speed of 9-10 Mbyte/s - i.e almost the full bandwith.

In the basement there is a switch connected to a fiber optics net, so each appartment has a dedicated 100 Mbit/s full duplex slot. The service provider is Tele2 - one of Scandinavia's biggest operators and they claim that the base net - i.e the fiber optics has a badwidth of 1,6 TB/s. That's 300x faster than this record reported by CNN.

How can this be?   One answer could be that my ISP is lying, but that doesn't add up either as my appartment is one of many connected to the same base net and I still get the full promised bandwith.    

Any network experts here that can explain this to me?

[drewb99 0]

That's probably just what the cables can theoretically handle. They can't pump nearly enough internet out to fill it up now, but they're ready for the future.

[kegetys 2]

...Any network experts here that can explain this to me?

They propably have that in their own networks, but they dont have that bandwith running across the ocean. I would imagine the "internet speed record" would mean transferring stuff through many different backbone operator networks.

Edit: Are there any details about this record anywhere? Like what did they transfer? Was it compressed?

I would imagine you could break these records by just paying big $$$ (or €€€) to the operators between points X and Y to prioritze your traffic over everything else...

[shadow 6]

That is the capacity of Tele2's fiber-cables, but they don't have the equipment to take it to use. I don't think any nordic ISP has that. I use Tele2 myself. They have slow and expensive bandwidth over here, but they and Telenor (Telewhore) is still the only ISP that covers my area with xDSL

A damn shame Bredbĺndsbolaget went backrupt in Norway and stopped signing new customers IIRC Bredbandsbolaget are way ahead of Tele2 when it comes to incorporating fiber and cranking up the juice.

[denoir 0]

...Any network experts here that can explain this to me?

They propably have that in their own networks, but they dont have that bandwith running across the ocean. I would imagine the "internet speed record" would mean transferring stuff through many different backbone operator networks.

Yeah, that's probably it. The speed itself in this "record" isn't so phenomenal. The bus between the CPU and the memory in your computer by far exceeds those numbers.

Quote[/b] ]That is the capacity of Tele2's fiber-cables, but they don't have the equipment to take it to use. I don't think any nordic ISP has that.

So how do you explain tens of thousands of people here running at 100 Mbit, without slowdowns? (It's probablu actually hundreds of thousands - 10 Mbit is standard now, but many people have more).

[shadow 6]

So how do you explain tens of thousands of people here running at 100 Mbit, without slowdowns? (It's probablu actually hundreds of thousands - 10 Mbit is standard now, but many people have more).

Simple. Lots and lots and lots of fiber

[iNeo 0]

Ontopic: Would we ever need this much bandwidth? If so what for?

RED

For example: downloading movies etc in a legal way - a lot cheaper for the customers and also for the makers as they don't have to produce DVD discs / VHS cassettes, and you get it right away. For maybe 2-4€.

We already have this technique, at least my ISP (Bredbandsbolaget) does. It costs around 5€ or 2€, depending on the movie, for 24hr access to it. They also provide tv-shows (1€ per show). It's not a biggie to connect your pc to your tv, so... legal, cheap and handy.

[toadlife 3]

So how do you explain tens of thousands of people here running at 100 Mbit, without slowdowns? (It's probablu actually hundreds of thousands - 10 Mbit is standard now, but many people have more).

Simple. Lots and lots and lots of fiber

The bandwidth limit of fiber optics cannot come close to being filled by todays hardware. Just one strand of fiber can carry a rediculous amount of Data - so much that, in theory you would need something like 100,000Giagbit switches to fill up one strand of fiber.

http://www.opticallynetworked.com/news/article.php/793241

So the answer is probably lots of nice switches and routers with fiber connecting them all.

You sweedish boys and your subsidized internet. I pay $40/month (US) for 384/128 Cable in my small town.

[iNeo 0]

You sweedish boys and your subsidized internet.  I pay $40/month (US) for 384/128 Cable in my small town.

Here: 30€/month for 10.000 / 10.000 cable

[denoir 0]

You sweedish boys and your subsidized internet.  I pay $40/month (US) for 384/128 Cable in my small town.

It's not subsidized actually. It's just murderous free competition. We have really a shitload of ISPs.

Well, it depends on what area you're in, but I'm paying 25 euro/month for 100 Mbit, which is cheap in Swedish terms. Normal is that price for a 10 Mbit line. If you're unlucky and live somewhere in the extreme north, then you have to settle for a 2 Mbit line. They are however upgrading that and IIRC they plan to have 10 Mbit available nationally by end of this year.

[toadlife 3]

You sweedish boys and your subsidized internet. I pay $40/month (US) for 384/128 Cable in my small town.

It's not subsidized actually. It's just murderous free competition. We have really a shitload of ISPs.

But wasn't the infrastructure subsizdized. It's cost major bucks to lay fiber down everywhere. The infrastructure is what we don't have in the united states. Because all fiber that is layed has to be layed by private companys, and we are so spread out, the rural areas like mine are left with old copper wires, which support next to nothing in terms of bandwidth.

I know Canada's network infranstructure was subsidized by the govornment. Being a socialist country like Canada, I assumed it was the same in Sweden.

[denoir 0]

No, unfortunately not. They gave tax reductions to people who got a home-PC from work, but not the infrastructure.

There was a lot of talk about a government initiative, but it never materialized. And the effect is that the poor bastards up north have to live with 2 Mbit or worse, while I in Stockholm can get 100 Mbit and get it cheaper.

But it is a profitable business. Sweden is the ideal country for such projects: small population, relatively centralized society and high-tech industry. So it's much easier to hook up Sweden's 9 million than it is to hook up USA's 300 million.

[Major Fubar 0]

Reminds me of a Simpsons quote:

Quote[/b] ]Nerd: "I developed a program to download porn one million times faster."

Marge: "Does anyone really need that much porn?"

Homer: "(salivating noise) Ahhhhhhhh million times faster"

On an above-the-waist level, imagine how much lag that a connection like that would eliminate in gaming - it would be like playing on a LAN.

[Major Fubar 0]

You sweedish boys and your subsidized internet.  I pay $40/month (US) for 384/128 Cable in my small town.

Oh boo-hoo! I pay $AUD 70.00 ($US 50.00)/month for cable that is:

a.) Down at least 2-3 times per month, sometimes for up to a full day or more

b.) Capped at 3GB and excess charged at $AUD 0.13 ($US 0.09) per MB over the limit - doesn't sound like a lot, but is sure as **** adds up

c.) Half the time requires a good 5 attempts or more to successfully connect

d.) At the moment their mail server is down, so I haven't received my email in over 3 days

e.) Has a help desk that routinely requires 45 minutes of holding on the phone to speak to someone

f.) VERY rarely reaches it's full MBPS potential

g.) Has an online usage meter that isd ALWAYS out of service towards the end of the month (billing period) so that unless you keep meticulous records, you have only a rough idea of how close you are to your limit

The thing that really steams me is when I signed up it was only like $AUD 40.00 a month and had no cap on download limit, other than a "reasonable usage" clause. Within about 2 months of my signup, they jacked the price to $AUD 60.00 a month, then not another month after that, brought in a 3GB download limit. Oh sure, you can upgrade to a plan that allows 6GB, but is MORE than double the price.  

As you may have guesed, I pretty much hate my ISP, but have no viable broadband alternative.

[edit]Just took a look at a recent bill, I actually now pay almost $AUD 90.00 ($US 64.00) for this shitty cable service. They must have jacked up the prices again recently[/edit]