The Sunday Times — April 6, 2008
THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.
[…]
The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day – the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs – enough to make a stack 40 miles high.
That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world.
[…]
Although the grid itself is unlikely to be directly available to domestic internet users, many telecoms providers and businesses are already introducing its pioneering technologies. One of the most potent is so-called dynamic switching, which creates a dedicated channel for internet users trying to download large volumes of data such as films. In theory this would give a standard desktop computer the ability to download a movie in five seconds rather than the current three hours or so.
Can you imagine an all fiber grid network that is parallel to the current internet and runs 10,000 times faster? It’s hard to imagine. Be sure to read the whole article.
Found by Rudy from Cage Match.
Yeah … right.
I SEE THE LIGHT, LORD, I SEE THE LIGHT. Oh, wait, I put this under the wrong post. I thought I was in the Atheist 2008 thread. Sh*t. Slow down, Hopper; take a smoke and look at the clocks:-)
You forgot that just after the begining of operations this LHC will create a black-hole that you destroy the entire earth! Don’t play god bastards!
Doesn’t the MacBook Air already do this?
Yeah, but it’s an add on.
Going with #3,
Here is the actual course of events to create such tremendous download speeds.
A) Cern flips on the LHC. After a moment a black hole is created.
B) Some engineer, right at the same instant, flips on the “the grid” and starts to download the movie “The Net” (<-Obscure reference warning!)
C) Because of the black hole, the earth is crushed to something the size of a marble.
While this may interfere with your plans for that picnic next week, it’s not all bad. For at least an instant ALL the transfer rates worldwide increase by a factor of 10,000! Why? When you are squished into a black hole all distances shorten considerably, increasing the transfer rates because the ping times are so much shorter!
It’s a bit overstated but I fear that with increasing download speeds, drm and tiered pricing will get greater emphasis as well==the result will be a system with excess capacity that everyone is paying for and no one can use except the gubment to spy on us.
Maybe that’s the plan?
#7 – If I knew there was a “plan”. “Gubment” needs to be and is directed by “the people”
but does that plan turn on a dime or turn more like red dwarf
#8–Chris==I just don’t know, I haven’t seen the plan, its just my irrational fear from seeing an early episode of “Baffled.”
What evidence do you have at all the our gubment is directed by the people? From time to time the people get mislead enough to vote for certain things tht coincide with what the dark powers plan to do all along, but when the voters clearly call for a change in plans===nothing happens. Now that just can’t be gubment by the people. Its gubment by the leaders the people elected who no longer respond to the will of the people.
In essence, our democracy turns out to be election of Kings for limited terms all supported by the black powers (mostly corporate kleptocracy folks like those giving Clinto 109 Million for services rendered) who mostly come out every four years and say keep your guns, shoot gays, and stop abortions.
Now, I don’t think there is any need for any turning. The plan has been clear since Raygun==feel for the poor while fleecing them with every tax cut and every deficit budget.
Why turn when straight ahead is working so well?
I simply meant that, although some people think they have a “plan”, no one has a working plan.
q:What evidence do you have at all the our gubment is directed by the people?
I live in Canada. So I can dream of a utopian future and be owned by the USA at the same time. Also, due to security reasons, I can’t give a real answer. (There’s your Dark Powers)
Without getting into specifics.. I just watch the pendulum swing.
Everybody seems to be overlooking one tiny little bottleneck…
Hard drive speeds.
the cloud is the hd
OK,
1. YOU WONT SEE IT..
2. the interconnect will be Nation to Nation..Its NOT the rest of the net.
3. IF, they could/would do the RESt of the USA…It would only be to the MAJOR HUBS, FIRSt..
4. it will be another 15 years before the rest of us SEE ANYTHING OF THIS.
11-
Why would you need a hard drive? They even speak to this in the article where ‘cloud computing’ becomes the norm, where all of your data is stored remotely, accessible wherever you are.
the better question is, what to do with unlimited bw
“the voters clearly call for a change in plans”
I hate to break it to you “voters” evan if Obama wins we are still looking at a long presents in Iraq. Wars do not start on a dime and do not stop on a demand. Evan if the winning candidate calls for an imediate withdrawal it will take at least two years to withdraw and a lot can happen in two years. Wars are like roomates easy to move in hard to move out.
Yawp==we said the same thing in Vietnam, and then left in 3 days.
Not the same situation of course, but, we could leave real fast if we wanted to. If we don’t, its because we don’t want to. Not a “physics” limitation in the real world. Politics–always politics.
Whats sad is that it is a toss up on how to leave while minimizing further damage to Iraq–no one actually knows or cares about that issue although it is talked about.
No, the only thing Obama cares about is how to pull out and not be criticized–so he will take time, kind of a temporal compromise. McCain’s war experiences left him with the idea that once you are held captive you have to stay to prove you are honorable. Silly old man–sure to get lots of young men killed, it’s the honorable thing to do.
And they have been saying this since 1998.
Ten years later, where the smeg is it?
Just like the air car, personal robot and my kitchen of tomorrow.
Cursor_
Anybody not wearing 2 million sunblock is gonna have a real bad red button day.
With bandwidth like that, what will Comcast use as an excuse to throttle torrents?
Sheesh … ya its faster…but they will only bring it to you at a higher price than what you are paying now. Sure there are upfront costs and maintenance…but the price never goes down.
Vapor mongers, all of them!!
And with the Telco STRANGLEHOLD on what they call “Broadband”, expect them the charge 10,000 time more for this new wideband service !!! Those old Telco “By-the-Minute” Execs can’t DIE OFF FAST ENOUGH for the new Internet Economy to have a real chance !!!
Re: #18
Hey Cursor, let’s hope Personal AirCars NEVER ARRIVE !!! Can you imagine DRUNKS DROPPING OUT OF THE SKY – ON YOUR HOUSE ??? I expect AirCars will be UN-INSURABLE for that reason !!! It’s bad enough already, with drunks driving off the road into buildings and houses as it is !!!
Dynamic switching, ha! Should be called by it’s real name – packet preference. This is how the big media companies plan to make their move. HD format will require enormous bandwidth and huge infrastructure expansion. Unless they can get their communications prioritized. Had to happen sooner or later.
No, it won’t be called “The Grid”. The movie, “Logan’s Run” already predicted this. It will be called “The Circuit”. And will be broadband enough to carry actual broads (men too) to whatever hotel or residential apartment that selects them for sex. After all, that what the internet is mainly used for now, sex. So why not cut out the middle media, and sent whatever sluts who want to party on the Circuit, that wants to? And while they’re creating the software to disassemble people and reassemble them somewhere else. They can surely create the filtering software that knocks out those pesky things call infections and inseminations. That way Circuit users won’t have to worry about safe sex practices. Hmmm, I hope you know that I’m only kidding?
It just occurred to me. This would allow the use of super HDTV. This would allow a whole wall to become a monitor. If anyone recalls the Ray Bradbury book, Fahrenheit 451, that was the wife’s passion, to have interactive soap operas with multiple walls of monitors.
So while the possible bandwidth may seem astronomical today, within a few years after becoming common, look for Comcast to try to throttle it again.