Setting speed records over the Internet isn't an easy task.
Technically light over a fiber optic network travels, well, at the speed of light. So to conduct its Internet land speed contest, the Internet2 consortium had to find some other metrics to measure speed by, and in this case it's raw capacity over distance.
Internet2 members from the California Institute of Technology and CERN took the prize, sending data 11,000 kilometers between Caltech's LA laboratories and CERN's campus in Geneva at a rate 6.25 Gb/s. That's a high-water mark of 68,431 terabit-meters per second, packed into a single data stream connecting two servers on opposite ends of the world. And it was accomplished using the same IPv4 protocols that power the public Internet.
That's a lot of bandwidth by anyone's standards — roughly 10,000 times faster than a DSL or cable modem connection. It begs the question, is that kind of capacity truly necessary? The people at Internet2 answer with an unequivocal “yes.”
Moisés Jafet Cornelio-Vargas
About Moisés
Physicists, award-winning technologist, parallel entrepreneur, consultant and proud father born in the Dominican Republic.
Interested in HPC, Deep Learning, Semantic Web, Internet Global High Scalability Apps, InfoSec, eLearning, General Aviation, Formula 1, Classical Music, Jazz, Sailing and Chess.
Founder of pluio.com and hospedio.com.
Author of the Sci-fi upcoming novel Breedpeace and co-author in dozens of publications.
Co-founder of MunicipiosAlDia.com, Jalalio Media Consultants and a number of other start-ups.
Former professor and Key-note speaker in conferences and congresses all across the Americas and Europe.
Proud member of the Microchip No.1 flying towards Interestellar space on board NASA's Stardust Mission, as well as member of Fundación Municipios al Día, Fundación Loyola, Fundación Ciencias de la Documentación and a number of other non-for profit, professional organizations, Open Source projects and Chess communities around the world.
All opinions here are his own's and in no way associated with his business interests or collaborations with third-parties.