High-Speed Record Set

Two scientific research centers today announced a new world record for sending data across high-speed networks that is equivalent to transferring a full-length DVD film in seven seconds.

The experiment took place between The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva and a computer technology lab at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) in Southern California.

CERN said in a report that it was able to send 1.1 Terabytes of data at 5.44 gigabits per second to its partner lab in California. The transmission was more than 20,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection and is also equivalent to transferring a 60-minute compact disc within one second.

Typically that kind of transmission or download can take up to eight minutes to complete with a high-speed connection. A film that is around 90 minutes long can sometimes take up to 15 minutes to download from the Internet.

While the goal of the experiment was to bring researchers closer to making the process of collaboration between scientists around the world more efficient, a representative for CalTech said that it was also a promising flagstone for the future of high-speed technology.

Scientists have said that on average the amount of information that can be transferred over the Internet has doubled every year since 1984, and that trend is expected to continue.

In March of this year scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center used fiber-optic cables to transfer 6.7 gigabytes of data, the equivalent of two DVD movies, across 6,800 miles in less than a minute.

The Stanford lab and a lab in the Netherlands were able to transfer uncompressed data at 923 megabits per second for 58 seconds. According to reports, the transmission was 3,500 times faster than a typical Internet broadband connection.

"Imagine ... being able to download two full-length, two-hour movies within a minute," one of the lead scientists was quoted as saying. "That changes the whole idea of how media is distributed."

However, the scientist pointed out, even if those same transfer speeds could be applied to the general public tomorrow, the average computer would be unable to handle the load.

"You have this inversion where the limitations on advances will not be the speed of the Internet but rather the speed of your computer," the scientist said.

In the meantime, super high-speed transmissions have aided the scientific community immensely.

"We don't have a vision of the future of the Internet yet," another scientist said. "It's a whole new world for which you can see the first few ideas, but we don't really know what it will be about."