Fastest Internet Ever?

From the IGN website:

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Researchers Achieve Record Breaking Internet Speeds
The fastest internet ever?
by Scott Lowe

February 29, 2008 - French researchers at Bell Labs announced today that they have managed to create a connection capable of transferring data at speeds of 16.4 terabytes-per-second. The firm claims that a connection was made over the span of 2,550 kilometers, roughly 1,584 miles, at a capacity of 41.8 petabits a second, per kilometer. The connection broke world records for capacity by distance through the use of 164 wavelength-division multiplexed channels, each modulating 100Gbps. In layman's terms, wavelength-division multiplexing technology essentially combines multiple optical signals into one optical fiber by organizing the laser light wavelengths into separate, distinguishable colors.

The significance of building a connection as prodigious as 16.4Tbps is important in terms of making strides towards the development of a 100Gbps Ethernet connection. By exploiting the increased fiber bandwidth made available by Bell Labs' recent innovations in wavelenght-division multiplexing, developers will be able to cope with the growing demands for greater capacity in internet backbones. As of press time, details on any projected public implementation remain unknown.

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Drooling yet? Suck it Verizon Fios!

Nice. Now they just need to make it run all the way up to my house.

16.4 TB per second and a capacity of 5.2 Petabytes! Nice. I don't see why they insist on using evil bits per second, though. We don't even measure speed in bits!

Does anyone need that much porno ;)

Hey, downloading video from the Internet (non-porno) takes a long time too. Especially HD.

Wait... I don't get it.

Downloading over 840 GB of data or more, most if it video (non-porn), does not happen over one day...
Pfft, everyone associates bandwidth with porn :)

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5.3 Tbytes per second. Nice. I don't see why they insist on using evil bits per second, though. We don't even measure speed in bits!

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Thats because internet communication is serial, it has always been measured in bits. Also, with more and more internal computer components working via serial bus now in a way it makes sense to measure that throughput in bits too, although somehow i cant see that taking off.

I dunno. I need a citation for that, Elysia! You can't make these ludicrous statements without any citations. Pff. Non-porno internet use. Hah!

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Originally Posted by mike_g

Thats because internet communication is serial, it has always been measured in bits. Also, with more and more internal computer components working via serial bus now in a way it makes sense to measure that throughput in bits too, although somehow i cant see that taking off.

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Quite, but seeing as you just divide by 8, I don't see why they won't measure in bytes.

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Originally Posted by twomers

I dunno. I need a citation for that, Elysia! You can't make these ludicrous statements without any citations. Pff. Non-porno internet use. Hah!

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Ooh, the dirty secrets we hide :p
But I can assure you there's so much more to find out there than porn!

>> I don't see why they insist on using evil bits per second, though.
It makes it seem faster... It's only 0.6625 TB/s otherwise. That's not nearly as impressive. You miss an order of magnitude.

Of course it does make it seem faster. It's a marketing scheme. But I don't see the need for it in a scientific article, or whatever to call it.

The article makes a blooper as it claims in the beginning that it is measuring "terabytes-per-second" only later to claim it is 164 channels of 100Gbps totaling a mear 16.4Tbps. This article is a joke... I thought finally I would be able to transfer my entire catalog of por.... music to my friend in a reasonable amount of time which I estimate is approximately 200TB of por... data.

Let's put it this way. Let's say a very good quality video is approximately 10MB for each minute of video. That would say (if I did my math right, which it is entirely possible that I didn't) that one minute at the maximum transfer speed on this band would yield about 46 days worth of video. In three hours, you would have nearly 23 years worth of video. In half of a day, you can download enough video to last you your entire life. That's overkill, just a bit, I think.

Ah, but it's amazing the actually were able to put so many lines besides each other. Imagine the interference.
It's just a new speed record, not a new speed technology...
Unless it's pure optic, then it would actually be easier... I think it's purely optic.

I thought optical broadband was done years ago.

Yeah, I just thought of that. Speeds of 100 mbps would probably not be possible without optic.
Hmmm. So what limits the amount of wires they can bunt together then, I wonder? Hardware?

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Speeds of 100 mbps would probably not be possible without optic.

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http://www.google.com/search?q=Gigabit+ethernet

Yeah they just probably made one fatter that ran more channels or something. At the end of the day tho, from what I have heard, the internet backbones generally arent where the bottlenecks are anyway.

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Originally Posted by Elysia View Post
Speeds of 100 mbps would probably not be possible without optic.

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Lol thats been around for ages and can run on bog standard cat5 ethernet cables :p

I'm just a little worried here...

Whose bandwidth did they steal to do this "miraculous" achievement?

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Originally Posted by mike_g

Lol thats been around for ages and can run on bog standard cat5 ethernet cables :p

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Shrug.
I never did keep am eye out for networking technology.
But 100 mbps with electric wires should create some interference. I think. I'm not really into the details of cables like that. I don't even know how much electric current is running through those things.

The optical fibers are lines owned by companies, and they can be connected with different TX/RX equipment on each end, I think.

2 thousand kilometers of it?

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Shrug.
I never did keep am eye out for networking technology.

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No worries sorry if i came across a bit 133t. Sometimes I just get a bit overexcited, lol

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But 100 mbps with electric wires should create some interference.

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Yeah, thats why they twist the wires and insulate them. That reduces crosstalk.

Raw data transfer is measured in bits because the physical layer doesn't give a damn of how you group the things. If you're going to use 9-bit-bytes and 27-bit-words, the physical layer won't notice the difference. (Except for the long periods of nothing because your computers crash.)

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Shrug.
I never did keep am eye out for networking technology.
But 100 mbps with electric wires should create some interference. I think. I'm not really into the details of cables like that. I don't even know how much electric current is running through those things.

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They use twisted pairs and differential signalling, both of which reduce interference and reduces the chances of outside noice interfering with the signal.

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Mats

To me and probably alot of people in Belgium, speed does not matter that much. What counts is the amount of traffic you are allowed/month.

I currently have an internet connection for 50€/month, that gives me 18Gig of download and upload together. Just 3 houres ago I had to purchase another 1Gig extra for (1.02€) because we exceeded that limit (and our isp puts you straight onto smallband - which is the equivalent of an old school dialup line). Now (3 hours later) the meter is telling me I have already used 200MB of this extra traffic (and we have been carefull with what we do, as in dont watch any youtube, listen to radio...).... and I still have 5 days left before the meter is resetted.

In short, speed is not any of my issues, traffic is. (and since the broadband market in belgium is being held by 2 large companies that own the distribution network, there wont be any change soon, there is just not enough compition going on:().

To give an idea of the situation here:

http://telenet.be/219/0/1/en/residential/internet.html
and
http://www.belgacom.be/private/en/js...adsl_res_price

I wish I lived in the Netherlands, Finland,Sweden or Norway :p (at least concerning internet access).

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Originally Posted by GanglyLamb

To me and probably alot of people in Belgium, speed does not matter that much. What counts is the amount of traffic you are allowed/month.

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I can see why...

I have heard about your situation with bandwidth limits, though.

whats a terabit

it's a kind of tortilla chip.

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Originally Posted by GanglyLamb

To me and probably alot of people in Belgium, speed does not matter that much. What counts is the amount of traffic you are allowed/month.

I currently have an internet connection for 50€/month, that gives me 18Gig of download and upload together. Just 3 houres ago I had to purchase another 1Gig extra for (1.02€) because we exceeded that limit (and our isp puts you straight onto smallband - which is the equivalent of an old school dialup line). Now (3 hours later) the meter is telling me I have already used 200MB of this extra traffic (and we have been carefull with what we do, as in dont watch any youtube, listen to radio...).... and I still have 5 days left before the meter is resetted.

In short, speed is not any of my issues, traffic is. (and since the broadband market in belgium is being held by 2 large companies that own the distribution network, there wont be any change soon, there is just not enough compition going on:().

To give an idea of the situation here:

http://telenet.be/219/0/1/en/residential/internet.html
and
http://www.belgacom.be/private/en/js...adsl_res_price

I wish I lived in the Netherlands, Finland,Sweden or Norway :p (at least concerning internet access).

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How much is 50€ in terms of US $ ??

When it comes to allowed traffic, my ISP is the worst. Just 1 GB per month for an equivalent of $6. :(

I can't download the P stuff :(

>> How much is 50€ in terms of US $ ??

About $76. It's a good price, considering how expensive cable TV is. But Americans still have substantially cheaper options, going by what GanglyLamb said.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

2 thousand kilometers of it?

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Yeah, why not?

They could have also looped their own line so that the effective length was longer. But I'm not really sure how they do it.

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Originally Posted by GanglyLamb

To me and probably alot of people in Belgium, speed does not matter that much. What counts is the amount of traffic you are allowed/month.

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Poor you. But none of Estonian ISPs have a bandwidth limit. ;)

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Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

Let's say a very good quality video is approximately 10MB for each minute of video.

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The Blue-Ray disk contains about 30-40G data for a film - say 120min video
so we get 250M per min ~ 33Mbs

I'd like to have 100Mbit Internet connection... 1Gbit is preffered

So I fill ISP will need these TBit lines to provide this...

Argh, makes me feel very 'behind' living in Australia. A vast majority of Australia is barely on ADSL, IDSN is widely used... Not to mention I get a whole 12GB to spend over 30 days including upload :'(

We're not just jibbed with speed, also with bandwidth. The government has promised to upgrade us to "world class broadband" (In fact he used that to get into office). However, I don't know what "world class is", nor where he's going to pull the few billion dollars it'll cost to install.

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Originally Posted by zacs7

Argh, makes me feel very 'behind' living in Australia. A vast majority of Australia is barely on ADSL, IDSN is widely used... Not to mention I get a whole 12GB to spend over 30 days including upload :'(

We're not just jibbed with speed, also with bandwidth. The government has promised to upgrade us to "world class broadband" (In fact he used that to get into office). However, I don't know what "world class is", nor where he's going to pull the few billion dollars it'll cost to install.

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That reply reminded me that somewhere in the world, someone is always worse off than you are. I thought that my connection was bad, i'm on a 4/1 Mbit line, which isn't much where i'm from...

Yes... In fact a few years ago when I was in high school we had 1Mbit IDSN for 1500+ students with a few hundred PCs, 8 servers, the works.

It's okay, now they upgraded to 2Mb ADSL. They charge every student 10c/MB and they pay 7c.

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Originally Posted by matsp

They use twisted pairs and differential signalling, both of which reduce interference and reduces the chances of outside noice interfering with the signal.

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Yeah, they have to use some sort of shielding to get rid of interference.

It's a shame about all these bandwidth limits. For this, it's about €39 per month (yes, it's a tad expensive compared to others, but it's the only choice out in the middle of nowhere), but bandwidth is free. I can download however much I want without a single complaint from the ISP. And who knows how much bandwidth I've spent? :D

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Yeah, I just thought of that. Speeds of 100 mbps would probably not be possible without optic.
Hmmm. So what limits the amount of wires they can bunt together then, I wonder? Hardware?

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That is very much possible, i get those speeds on my LAN everyday with normal cat5 connection wires and i am sure that there are no optical wires in the network.

I envy all you people because i pay about $25 a month for a 128 kbps connection with no download cap which really sucks. Most of the plans offered by local isps have a cap of around 1GB per month with speeds upto 2 mbps :| just tell me if that makes any sense to you.

Doesn't make any sense. Does that make you happy? :)
I get 8 Mbps/1Mbps w/ no cap. Which is pretty lousy compared to other offerings, but it's the best offered right here.

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I get 8 Mbps/1Mbps w/ no cap. Which is pretty lousy compared to other offerings, but it's the best offered right here.

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And you call that lousy ? :P

Yes! Seeing as there's even 100 MBps (though you won't reach that, of course) for ~36€, among others. No cap of course.
Or how about 24/1 MBps for €27?
Like I said, crap.

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Yes! Seeing as there's even 100 MBps (though you won't reach that, of course) for ~36€, among others. No cap of course.
Or how about 24/1 MBps for €27?
Like I said, crap.

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You are in Norway, amirite?

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Originally Posted by vart

The Blue-Ray disk contains about 30-40G data for a film - say 120min video
so we get 250M per min ~ 33Mbs

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Source : http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3338
* I've removed posting the data here because it stretches the post to annoying widths.

First, when I said "very good quality", I didn't mean Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Personally, I'd call DVD quality "very good"... but who am I to judge? Regardless, the numbers I've posted (which are from what I understand pretty accurate) seem to show that a Blu-Ray movie can range anywhere from ~300MB/min to ~150MB/min, the average seemingly being closer to about 215MB/min. So... even multiplying all of my data by 21.5... you're still downloading a life-time worth (90 or so years) of video (Blu-Ray quality, mind you) in about 20 days. Even if you divided the download speed by 35... you're still downloading 90 or so years of Blu-Ray video in under 2 years. Think about downloading 45 minutes of Blu-Ray video in one minute... this goes well beyond streaming HD video. Which, I suppose is something that will be in high demand in the near future. This is a good step towards completely doing away with tangible disk media.

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Originally Posted by Neo1

You are in Norway, amirite?

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Nope. Close, but no cookie :D

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Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

Source : http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3338
* I've removed posting the data here because it stretches the post to annoying widths.

First, when I said "very good quality", I didn't mean Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Personally, I'd call DVD quality "very good"... but who am I to judge? Regardless, the numbers I've posted (which are from what I understand pretty accurate) seem to show that a Blu-Ray movie can range anywhere from ~300MB/min to ~150MB/min, the average seemingly being closer to about 215MB/min. So... even multiplying all of my data by 21.5... you're still downloading a life-time worth (90 or so years) of video (Blu-Ray quality, mind you) in about 20 days. Even if you divided the download speed by 35... you're still downloading 90 or so years of Blu-Ray video in under 2 years. Think about downloading 45 minutes of Blu-Ray video in one minute... this goes well beyond streaming HD video. Which, I suppose is something that will be in high demand in the near future. This is a good step towards completely doing away with tangible disk media.

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Of course, the movie is compressed more than it needs to be, usually. So you could lower it a slightly and get good compression, enough to stream, but still, we're a long way from streaming that.

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Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

Think about downloading 45 minutes of Blu-Ray video in one minute...

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You are trying to pretend that all this bandwidth is going solely to your comp...

Just in the same home I live - there are at least 5 home-networks (in 16 flats) according to the visible WAN access points with good quality of the signal.

And I suppose all others use Internet in some way on one computer or network without WAN access.

There are generally 2 underliyng providers - Telephone company and Cabel TV. So I suppose 5-10 flats in this building use the same cabel for their Internet access as I am.

And I'm not living in the desert, so it is not only building using same network... So if I want to get 1Gbit channel - I do not feel - 16Tbit channel used by High level provider will be too much...

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Originally Posted by Elysia

we're a long way from streaming that.

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Well, of course... everything I've said to this point has been about bringing a 16.4Tbps connection directly to the home (and assumes hardware that can even support that throughput). It's all hypothetical at this point. However, we're not far from streaming (fairly) high quality media or at least downloading it in a relatively short amount of time. As long as it's less time than it takes to go to the video store.

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Originally Posted by twomers

Does anyone need that much porno ;)

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Too much porn is like too much money :D

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Originally Posted by abachler

Too much porn is like too much money :D

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Everyone will want to relieve you of it?

When you have lots of porn, its easier to make more porn :)

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Originally Posted by abachler

When you have lots of porn, its easier to make more porn :)

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Err how is that? You can't really invest porn, can you? And it's not like porn will start breeding and creating offspring if you leave them alone in the same folder xD

How about movies? Lets discuss movies, instead of porn. It's the same principle and we avoid idiotic remarks.

Gee, I've been hinting about that all the time, and it's first now that someone stops saying it's "porn" ;)
There's lots of movies to be had off the internet.

Yes. Besides this is a public forum where underage users can subscribe, I'm pretty sure. Keeping up with this theme is most probably a breach of the TC.

Yes the obvious solution is to obfuscate the fact we are discussing porn by calling it 'movies'. Ill play along :devil:

Although I hardly think using the word 'movies' constitutes lude and lecivious chat. It's not like I described the most recent 'movie' I watched in horribly graphic detail. While 'movies' itself, and graphic description of 'movies' may be unseemly, the mere acknowledgement of its existance, or the implication that huge bandwidth is needed for its acquisition, obvious (if a bit too) humor about that fact is not. Of course the mods are free to disagree with me.

abachler, you are missing out in several genres of fine cinema. :D

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Originally Posted by citizen

abachler, you are missing out in several genres of fine cinema. :D

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I cant really reply to that except by PM, my reponse is just too horrible for anyone under 35 :D

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Originally Posted by abachler

Yes the obvious solution is to obfuscate the fact we are discussing porn by calling it 'movies'. Ill play along :devil:

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No. The solution is to not discuss porn at all. You can put your nose down now.

Quit nit picking Mario, if you don't like 'movies' then don't talk about 'movies', but don't tell others they can't talk about 'movies' when it is blatantly obvious that downloading 'movies' takes longer than downloading 'pictures of jesus'. If we make a joke about a really fast connection being used to download 'pictures of jesus' I'm guessing you woudlnt care, but since we made a joke about downloading 'movies' you get all holier than thou. Have you ever stopped to think that the kind of person that jokes about downloading 'movies' or would compare it to 'pictures of jesus' is also pretty likely to make a joke about 'movies about jesus' if you push the issue. I don't think anyone here want's a graphic description of a 'movie about jesus', nor am I looking forward to providing one, so why don't you just drop it and stop making an ass of yourself over a harmless joke.

Uh?

Well... I'm speechless.

Entertain yourself with this while I try to decipher your comma-less post.

Oi, I want to stop the argument before it starts. This happens to be one of the rules, I wouldn't go into graphic detail about porn, who's going to make it or why. Since Mario asked you to stop talking about porn it's probably a good idea to comply with his request.

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3. Please be careful of your language and content. Keep everything suitable for children, or it will be edited. This also means don't do things like * out certain letters or purposely misspelling profanity to get by filters. People still know what you mean. This board is a PG-13 environment. The moderators reserve the right to remove or close any thread that they deem to be inappropriate.

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Generally it is not speed but usage allowances which matter.
I mean if you have an 8 megabit connection but a 3gigabyte monthly allowance it won't
take you long to use you monthly allowance up, you do the maths, but I reckon you will
have used you allowance up in about what 2 hours????

I have a 2 megabit connection but my allowance is supposedly unlimited but I am sure I would
run into to problems if I took that 'unlimited' literally. If I do want to do a big download I
make sure I do it 'off-peak' preferably overnight. I am not sure how much I download but I expect it
averages a lot less than 10 gig a month, I would probably get away with 40 gig
before my ISP started getting upset, but I would have to buy a new hard drive every few months :D,
or have a room full of DVD's.

I have Dial-Up
pretty damn fast

Dial-up? Fast?!

My connection is (usually) dial-up, and it's anything but fast. It is half-speed dial-up (28.8KB/s), though.

Broadband in Australia is rubbish. Expensive and coverage is patchy. There are no regulations requiring your line to be provisioned, nor maintained, to a standard capable of broadband.

ISDN has now been scrapped. Telsra is forcing ISDN users on to their very, very expensive mobile broadband.

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Yes! Seeing as there's even 100 MBps (though you won't reach that, of course) for ~36€, among others. No cap of course.
Or how about 24/1 MBps for €27?
Like I said, crap.

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I had 'up to' 20Mb/1.5Mb ADSL2+ at my home but only got 2.7Mb/1.5Mb due to the distance from the exchange.

A fault developed in my line (collapsed conduit) causing drop-outs, noise and speed loss (down to 0.5Mb/0.5Mb).

National phone company (Telstra) refuses to repair the fault and nothing I can do will make them fix it (and I mean nothing!).

My ISP changed me to ADSL (8Mb/0.25Mb) of which I get 1.2Mb/0.25Mb. I have 7Gb + 8 Gb off peak before I am 'shaped' to 64Kb. This costs Au$50 (ADSL) + Au$33 (line rental) + call costs.

Some plans charge up to Au$300 per additional Gb (up+down)!

My home is 8Km from a capital cities CBD (ie inner suburb), not like I am in a remote location.

I didn't have much complaints about with BigPond down under in Port Pirie. The price was a little off, true. But the service was good. The uptime was in fact the best I had seen so far either in Portugal, UK or Canada. I'd go 3 months without getting offline even once. And while not entirely remote, Pirie is some 200 km from Adelaide.

I have to say the best broadband connection I got so far is over here in Portugal. I get a 24Mb ADSL for ~45 Euros a month (15 of that for my option of unlimited access). I get crazy bandwidth (I downloaded openSUSE torrent, for instance at a steady 290Mbs) and very high uptime.

The problem with many of our ISPs is that they pay bandwidth themselves to the companies who own the lines. Usually this is the limited number of communications companies on each country. In Australia or Portugal, for instance, there's only one. On top of that these companies are sometimes shielded by their respective governments. So the lack of competition forces prices up when there's a host of ISPs wanting to tap on those resources. What's worst, those still oferring services on top of X.25 lines have to pay twice; bandwidth and time.

Can you say MONOPOLY, I knew you could. We don't have that problem as much in the states, as we broke up Ma Bell decades ago. We still have local monopolies, so wherever you live you can only get phone service from one company, btu you can get yoru long distance form anyone, and with cable internet, now there is finally some real competition for internet service at least. I used to live in a small town, and they just got DSL about 2 years ago. Basically it took businesses moving out or refusing to move in because they coudlnt get high speed internet for the local monopoly to realize that 'there might be something to that darn interweb fad'. The same migth apply to Australia, it sounds liek a very busines unfriendly country. Money is good anywhere, business's don't have time to deal with countries that play favorites.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

I didn't have much complaints about with BigPond down under in Port Pirie. The price was a little off, true.

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The same account I pay Au$50 for is $85 with Telstra, but with Telstra you have to sign up for at least 12 months, uploads are also included in your quota and you pay for excess data.

Telstra sells a 'Broadband' account [256Kb/s, 400Mb up+down, 24 month contract

I

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

Usually this is the limited number of communications companies on each country. In Australia or Portugal, for instance, there's only one.

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Telstra was gifted the copper phone network when it was privatised, on the condition that it allows other companies access.

Telstra keeps taking the government, ministers and regulators to court trying to eliminate that access (and claiming it built the network with Telstra money rather than public money).

These court actions are designed to discourage other companies investing in new equipment (DSLAMs etc).

Yeah, soounds like its time to break it up. Since the people in charge have lost touch with reality, or at least are trying to convinve others that THEY have, a reasonable arangement is probably out of the question.

I feel for you novacain. I do agree aussies are generally badly served when it comes to broadband connections. I do remember Telstra relationship with its customers and the general feeling aussies have that Telstra is the enemy.

What annoyed me most about Telstra was the abusive use of fine printing on their contracts and call center tactics. They'd phone you and offer a new you-have-to-love-this plan and before you knew things turned out not to be exactly as you were told.

However, Australia has some specificities to it that few other countries share, and I think this plays a major role on prices and maybe even lack of competition. Australia is an island the size of a continent with just a little over 20 million inhabitants, surrounded by underdeveloped countries (NZ exempt) and whose closest IT neighbor is some 12 flight hours away... I mean, c'mon! Things do tend to be a little expensive on the IT side of life over there.

Kiwis complain a lot to for the exact same reasons.

I used to game with a bunch of kiwis a couple years back, I remember them complaining a ton about the internet service down there.