Superfast Internet :D [Technology news]

[andyoyo]

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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 latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

Read more here.
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"The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years. "
---seems this will be more time available for now, in UK-Euro, before USA. -andyoyo

[Jennihul]

Sweet!

There is a Rolling Stones/Get Off of My Cloud joke in there somewhere...

Jennifer

[SeanFu]

Interesting article, with the coming of more bandwidth and speed it will allow a lot more possibilities.

[Brutha]

It always a matter of how much you want to pay to transfer data.
The amount you need to pay to transfer a given amount of data rates follows Moores law.

allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

With a flat rate you already have video telephony in a good quality today on Ip basis.

In general I don't see the news in the article.
A number like at speed of X faster is irrelevant is you don't have a price attached to it.

The prediction that you can distribute processing power easier that way is also illusoric through a better internet.
The limit to have distribution of processing power is mainly a software problem that won't be solved through better hardware.

[SeanFu]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The limit to have distribution of processing power is mainly a software problem that won't be solved through better hardware.

That's true, since massively multiplayer games still are hindered a lot of times by the client and not the host servers. Too many slow clients can cause issues.

[Dan.Linehan]

Why network neutrality is important, and why claims of "faster internet" should not be trusted..



Who owns the grid? Who owns it in ten years? Twenty? What are the routing protocols?

What packet types or providers get priority? How is data tracked? How is access granted? By who?

[SeanFu]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

Why network neutrality is important, and why claims of "faster internet" should not be trusted..


Who owns the grid? Who owns it in ten years? Twenty? What are the routing protocols?

What packet types or providers get priority? How is data tracked? How is access granted? By who?

I suppose it could be owned and distributed in regions, but I suppose the governments would need to step in to stop any monopolies.

[Trezker]

Internet should no be controlled by anyone and it should be paid for with tax money.

Anyway... there's nothing new in that article. Fiber has been around for decades, at universities local nets movies move from computer to computer so fast you'd be wasting time if you put an actual dvd in your computer instead of getting it from the net.

All they're saying really is that they're gonna make fiber global... So what, I 've been waiting for that like forever. It'll still be unavailable to the country side for quite some time because of the high costs of putting fiber in the ground.

And what's that nonsense about replacing internet? It's just a hardware upgrade.

[Jennihul]

Fiber isn't a practical answer for global implementation. It's a slow and expensive manufacturing process.

Jennifer

[Lil Chris]

Fiber isn't a practical answer for global implementation. It's a slow and expensive manufacturing process.

Perhaps, but that will change with time as the manufacturing process is streamlined.

My concern is also on who is going to own the grid, it sets a bad precedence for controlling information.

[Jennihul]

Who owns the internet? No one in particular.

Invented by the same group...Hmmm....

I'm guessing no one will own the grid either.

Jennifer

[Brutha]

All they're saying really is that they're gonna make fiber global...

Not really they are only saying that they will use it to trade data between universities.

The more I reread that article the more I come to the conclusion that the newspaper author doesn't really know much about what he wants to write.

[openeyes]

I'd first read about Internet2 a few years ago (funny how that name isn't mentioned anywhere in the times article). Anyone that wants to read up a bit more on it can check it out under that name:


Internet2

Building A Faster Internet | Newsweek International Edition | Newsweek.com

"Whereas a PC can now stream two simultaneous video channels, on a dynamic-circuit network it could send 4,000 channels at once. Downloading a high-definition movie over a cable Internet connection of 4.5 megabytes per second would take about three hours. Over a 10-gigabit-per-second dynamic-circuit network, the same movie would download in five seconds.

"The technology is being developed by Internet2, a consortium of U.S. universities, companies and scientific and governmental organizations. For now, only a handful of people can use it. It's being tested on the soon-to-be-operational Large Hadron Collider in Europe, where scientists must share massive amounts of data about the collision of subatomic particles."