Coming soon: superfast internet

Source: The Sunday Times

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: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece

The mind (etc.) boggles.

good one...

pervert :)

hehehe

hahaha

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It absolutely buggers the imagination.

'etc.' indeed.

May I live to see the day.

but in general, we're still FAR behind the rest of the developed world regarding Internet speeds.

Yes, I'm aware this article goes well beyond 50Mbps.

to invent the Internet don't get it fast enough. Some communities pay for it and demand it for their citizens. We are behind the world in many ways thanks to Congressional waste and corruption to corporations. A&T promised Congress this years ago. Instead they buy up Yahoo.

we'll see a massive increase in bandwidth. People will complain, but people will always complain. That is to be expected. Progress hurts. If progress didn't hurt, we'd still have a "lamplighter" Union.

:)

As any versed techie will tell you, it's not the size of your download that matters, it's what you do with.... errr sorry, it's the upload.

Furthermore:
- Comcast only offers the 50 Mb downlink since they muffled the torrent ports. Where I live, this would get their HQ burned to the ground.
- 50 Mb is about as fresh and great as the diesel engine. Most developed countries consider that a "solid household link".

Anything under 100/100 can't really be called superanything these days.

which most users aren't concerned with. Torrent users, on the other hand, would benefit with an equal up/down speed.

I wasn't arguing that point.

will free speech be allowed on it by the people that own it or will the speech be limited to what the corporations and others that control it allow.

It'll just cost a lot extra

if it is too expensive people will simply stay with the old internet unless forced to change over.

If they do it to stifle free speech then I figure that the internet will end up useless to all but the corporate puppet masters.

They really wont like having whole pirated films downloaded in a couple of seconds.

The sad part is, that since this technology does exist now, some relatively poor country that piracy originates WILL utilize it, but we here in the US will end up waiting forever before we see it.

Other countries will have this wonderful new technology and we will be left back in the stone age due to the RIAA fascists.

...for some strange and deniable reason. ;-)

Also, fuck Verizon and other ISPs for throttling me BELOW the rate I pay for, the dicks.

Sorry!

they seem to have a problem with people using the internet to download and upload whatever people want using there service, so they take it upon themselves to slow your speed down, even though you pay for full high speeds.

NT!

My eye brow is raised....

Thank you for the tip!

NT!

...and when you call because you can no longer send emails they blame it on your email program.

I hate Comcast.

And after that, The Matrix.

May solve overpopulation! :p

down to slow motion:argh:

They'll never give up. Thankfully, we'll have VR hackers someday. ;)

we'll get "404 - File Not Found" in a fraction of the time it now takes.

Don't have too much of free speech. It is harmful.

When I search many stories are changed or gone over night.

Seems the problem will be "control of the voices" no matter what the speed.

And I don't know why.
Perhaps I'm approaching the age a little too soon in which I worry about new technology destroying life as we know it.

go with it.


It's not scary. Embrace it.

I just hope no one hacks me again, last time left me with two weeks of no memory and a splitting headache. x(

As the article says, "Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

“It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere,” he said."

That means that surveillance and control of everything you do that involves a computer, all your documents, all of our news, all of history, becomes enormously easier.

For more details, here's a start: http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/2007/12/update-re-bringing-internet-to-heel.html

I can't wait for the day when all my music is available to me, no matter if I'm driving or flying or taking a train, it will always be there. My information, my contacts, so on and so forth. Soooner or later everything I know will be available to me. Everything, including my contacts know will be available to me. Degrees will be useless, as I will be able to access that information in a heartbeat. Everything that we know will have to go through a metaphysical reboot. We can either adapt and live in our world of Global Warmring, or we can adapt.

The only way this can be "scary" is if only a few people have it. If virtually everyone has access, it's a brave, new world - but not a Brave New World.

1. I'd feel better about letting all the data live on the net -- which really means, letting it be centralized on machines I no longer own and control -- if I knew I'd have the same access to the records of the powerful that they will have to mine -- but it's not clear to me that that will be the case. Do you really think I'm going to have the same access to read e-mails such as those Cheney deleted as he would to read mine?

I don't. I think part of the reason for the push to centralize data and applications (though not necessarily the only reason) is that the control freaks are freaked that the internet is so out of control, and centralizing it is the best way to end that.

I think the people who control the centralized data, applications and hardware will have more access and power than ever before, while the rest of us have less than we do now.

2. If you don't control your info, it can be altered against your will. You can be framed, or exonerating info or data that you value can simply disappear. The same is true of our history -- it can be altered much more easily if centralized.

I'm very excited about the potential offered by new technologies, and centralizing some kinds of data and applications probably makes sense. But there are serious dangers, too, and it worries me that so few people seem concerned about them.

With a new name?

My fucking ass - unless the price of a local call goes up to about $100 per month.

Big Telecom is charging outrageous prices for the internet services they already offer. With something this fast, you don't think they're going to make this available to only those who can afford it? It will be quite some time before this is even affordable to much of the middle class, and forget about the poor being able to access this in the foreseeable future.

Everything miniaturizes. Everything will be cheaper, everything that you see as too expensive will eventually taken for granted.

is to render independent VOIP providers' products ineffective, as telcos and cable providers all have their own. At times, I get data throughput at pretty respectable speeds, but telephony? Not even close.

And yes, they also close port 25 from time to time, but deny it. Had to switch my email to SSL, which has issues of its own.

Does Vista? Seems like it would.

Mostly written by reporters who haven't the slightest clue what they're talking about. Computing grids, data clouds, all of the other names you want to attach to them are really just computer clusters that anyone can build.

The important thing for you and I is that they won't do diddly for us (unless you're performing atomic calculations, or are trying to predict the weather). If you put your computer onto a grid network, you still are limited to the power of your single grid node for daily tasks. Your internet connection is still going to be limited to the speed of your incoming line. Sorry, but there are no free rides.

Seti@Home and Folding@Home are simple demonstrations of grid computing. Lots of computers processing little bits of a much larger puzzle, to solve it faster. Cerns new "Grid" is simply a more elaborate version of the same thing, with minimum network and performance standards for each of the nodes.

Ho hum.

catches up with Estonia!

In Slovenia.

20/20 Mbit/s
40/20 Mbit/s
60/60 Mbit/s
100/100 Mbit/s
1/1 Gbit/s

Hell, my university throttles downloads here in Florida. The sooner I can get somewhere sane, whether in the US or Europe, the better.

Note: Not entirely serious, but speeds like that are definitely cool.

..and we'll look at it. :D

I'm pretty sure that most of Europe at this point has a "household" link of 50/50-100/100 available. I've seen our providers increase bandwiths and lower prices at the same time for -existing- subscribers. That tells you how much bandwith price has fallen lately.

As for limiting downloads and closing ports etc... We would have a riot. We've realized long ago that there's more than porn on the ole net, and people are increasingly using it as their primary resource for school, work, and even leisure time. Limiting internet speeds needlessly hampers progress and growth.

We should ask to whom this fantastic new bandwidth will be sold.

...researchers in Sydney will be able to see their colleagues in Geneva getting sucked into a Large Hadron Collider-generated black hole instantly!