CYBERSPACE — It’s faster than a sluggish dial up, able to kick the ass of DSL, and capable of jumping way the hell over the top of cable modems. What is it? It’s Internet2 – and it just got even faster.For the longest time, Internet2 was at least theoretically capped at 10 gigabits per second – which is still on beyond the fastest connection speed the average home web surfer could even dream of achieving. According to Level 3 Communications, Inc., that speed ceiling has been blown.
Now clocking in at 10 times faster than even previously, P2P downloaders will be able to suck down popular mainstream movies in mere seconds instead of the previous sluggish minutes or hours, thanks to its innovative method for transmitting data.
Mostly finished by late August of this year, the speed freaks at Level 3 Communications managed to find a way, at least for a brief period of time, to add another 10 Gbps for at least some applications without slowing down everyone else in the area.
“It’s now possible for a single computer to have a 10 gigabit connection, and we needed to have a way of making sure that those kinds of demanding applications could be served at the same time as all the normal users,” Internet2’s CEO, Doug Van Houweling, explains.
Running parallel to the current internet, Internet2’s network allows universities, researchers, and corporations connect in real time thanks to its use of 10 different wavelengths of light via a single cable.
Such entities can typically expect one 10 Gbps connection to the 100 Gbps Internet2 backbone, in addition to another 10 Gbps connection that can be used for special purposes.
The company anticipates heavier traffic once the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the planet’s biggest particle collider, becomes operational near Geneva next May. Houweling anticipates that physicists will lead the charge toward the bad ass on-demand service. Astronomers will likely add themselves to the mix in time so that they can access radio telescopes and gain a greater understanding of what lies beyond our current gaze.
“There will be thousands of physicists who will all need to access the data coming out of the LHC,” he foretells.
In time Houweling expects Internet2 to move even faster, with 400 Gbps becoming available within 12 – 18 months.
