CYBERSPACE – Just when dial-up modems are starting to fade into obscurity and website developers can now safely assume that most visitors on the other end are connected via a broadband connection of some sort, researchers from a collection of government, educational and industry groups are hard at work on the next level of broadband technology. Imagine being able to download a high-definition feature length movie in 5 seconds as opposed to the 3 hours it currently takes. Sound far-fetched? It might not be.The Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network is an optical circuit network that could be used to provide dedicated broadband for the more demanding Internet jobs. As opposed to existing technologies, which break data up into multiple small packets and send them along similar pathways – opening the process up to delays and bottlenecks – dynamic-circuit networks would open up a dedicated path for data that would close immediately after the data was sent. And while the technology would require a fiber-optics connection right up to your PC, along with some specialized software, the whole thing would generally work on the Internet’s existing structure.

“A key concept in the NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure vision is that network capacity should be available as a schedulable, on-demand resource—just like a supercomputer or radio telescope is today,” says Rick Summerhill, CTO of Internet2. “The idea is that researchers, scientists, artists, or faculty can tap into deep bandwidth resources whenever and wherever they need it. We believe the new Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network which was developed through collaboration with our community, brings this important vision to fruition.”

This technology could come is handy for Internet projects that involve a lot of data, such as those that involve sending high quality video. According to a recent Newsweek report on dynamic-circuit networks, currently a PC can stream only two video channels at one time – but that could change to as many as 4000 simultaneous streams under a dynamic-circuit network. Additionally, synchronized interaction by individuals at both ends would be greatly enhanced by greatly reducing delays in data transmissions.

It doesn’t make much of an imagination to think up scenarios whereby such dramatic improvements in speed could impact the adult entertainment industry. As the industry struggles to deal with the threat of pirated content, interaction between the talent and the surfers will probably take a more prominent role in future years.