Fastest Broadband In The World

[Uzor]

Thought I'd post this here, fsince it's an interesting little tidbit:

At DreamHack on November 24th to 27th Cisco and Telia are building the world’s fastest Internet connection with speeds of breathtaking 120 gigabits per second. DreamHack is expected to attract a record number of participants this year – about 20 000 people. With their help, the aim is to beat the world record in capacity utilization in the network – the starting point is at 16.30 on Thursday.

The record-breaking attempt will take place during the opening ceremony of DreamHack on 24 November at Elmia in Jönköping. All participants will be invited to take advantage of as much as possible of the network’s capacity. The previous DreamHack-record is 20 gigabits.

- DreamHack Winter 2011 will be the biggest festival we’ve ever staged with record numbers of visitors on site, we are confident that together we will break all previous records. Table seats are sold out but we still have plenty of room for day visitors. Welcome to DreamHack, says Robert Ohlén, CEO at DreamHack.

A working group of some 50 people from Cisco, Telia and DreamHack have been working since last summer to design and build the infrastructure for world’s fastest Internet connection between Stockholm and Jönköping. All the equipment is in place and only a few test runs remain.

- It’s great to be part of building the fastest connection in the world. In addition, we now have the opportunity to test our equipment under extreme conditions. 120 gigabits is tremendously fast but data and video traffic on the Internet is growing sharply, as well as the need of broadband. DreamHack gives us a taste of the future net speeds, says Jonas Malmgren, sales manager at Cisco.

The internet connection will have a speed of 120 gigabits per second. This is almost certainly the first time such a fast connection has been set up over a distance of over 300 km (between Jönköping and Stockholm). Specifically, the connection to 750,000 people, or nearly all the inhabitants in Stockholm, can stream music simultaneously. Or you can download a movie in a 47 thousandths of a second.

- Gamers place great demands on their connectivity and by creating experiences for them through our broadband as we evolve as a company. Therefore, we are proud to offer the participants at DreamHack a world class gaming experience. Demand for broadband with faster speeds and quality are insatiable, including the increasing number of gadgets connected to the Internet. We are therefore investing 5 billion in fiber networks and this world record attempt is preparing us to remain as the user’s cutting edge technology, says Stefan Trampus, Head of Broadband Services at TeliaSonera.

The fast connection is made possible by several new technologies from Cisco and Telia. Telia is behind the fiber network while Cisco contributes to the hardware, including two CRS-3 routers that are the most powerful router with a transmission capacity of 322 out of bits per second. With this capability, it would for example be possible for all 1.3 billion Chinese to conduct a video call – simultaneously.

The total value of Cisco equipment used during DreamHack is about 45 million. In addition, Telia’s equipment in the network.

In other news; England is aiming to get Europe's fastest Broadband connection and largest infrastructure by infesting a mere £100mil. Sadly, I think it's too little, too late for that considering how utterly useless their coverage is right now.

[Ragnus]

Holy hell...

[Hyan]

I had a 24mb/sec connection for a year.

Didn't even notice when they lowered it back to 8mbs.

In other words- wtf is the point of this?

[Zerk]

Isn't the 'cap' for most console gaming 10mb/sec to get the 'optimal' connection? anything over that is a waste..

[Uzor]

Well, DreamHack is a yearly event in Sweden, and is a giant LAN-party. At DreamHack this year, they had over 20,000 people who shared the broadband connection. So assuming 20000 people were there at any one time; each attendant had access to 6 Mbit/s, assuming everyone uses the same amount.

[Alarial]

Streaming HD quality movies?

[hey]

I had a 24mb/sec connection for a year.

Didn't even notice when they lowered it back to 8mbs.

In other words- wtf is the point of this?

Probably because you don't regularly download large files. I've got 30 mbps (usually 33-35 actually), and would kill for more. I download over 200 gb per month every single month, and occasionally get over 500 gb in a busy month (that's just for me btw, i also live with 5 other people, though i have no idea how much they use). The point is so you don't have to wait an hour to start watching a movie.

Isn't the 'cap' for most console gaming 10mb/sec to get the 'optimal' connection? anything over that is a waste..

Gaming doesn't use anywhere near that much bandwidth. Latency is all that really matters for gaming.

[archibaldcrane]

Would be nice, I could do my job at home no problem if I had a connection like that and could stream 10 channels of 10-bit uncompressed HD video simultaneously over the internet.

[Ketna]

Just switched over to Centurylink in my area because they are offering 40/20 service (closest is comcast with 16/3 until DOCSIS 3 rolls in). It is such a relief to have the extra bandwidth so we and my brother can both be gaming while streaming music, and have someone watching Netflix in the living room w/o having to worry about LAG issues.

Plus being able to download a new game on Steam, 15gb in an hour is awesome. Between me and my brother we average about 200gb a month, and when we upgrade our PCs, that month will be closer to 500gb with all the games being re-downloaded.

I would get fiber if it were offered, but only 1 local company is offering it, and only if you live near downtown .

[Mazmaz]

Probably because you don't regularly download large files. I've got 30 mbps (usually 33-35 actually), and would kill for more. I download over 200 gb per month every single month, and occasionally get over 500 gb in a busy month (that's just for me btw, i also live with 5 other people, though i have no idea how much they use).

Get out of the house more.

[hey]

Get out of the house more.

I don't really see how downloading >200 gb per month tells you that i don't leave the house, but ok.

Spoiler: show

and by ok, i mean why would i want to leave the house when everything i could ever want to do can be done from home?

[Hyan]

Probably because you don't regularly download large files. I've got 30 mbps (usually 33-35 actually), and would kill for more. I download over 200 gb per month every single month, and occasionally get over 500 gb in a busy month (that's just for me btw, i also live with 5 other people, though i have no idea how much they use). The point is so you don't have to wait an hour to start watching a movie.

I guess I'm just content with waiting for an hour or less to watch everything I'd ever want to watch.

Also first world problems.

[Kryssan]

People are so shortsighted. The number of quotes about how people wouldn't need this or that with computers that we now take for granted and complain about not having better still seems limitless. First world problems, etc - 'cause like if we weren't expending energy/money/brainpower on this it would totally be utilized wholly for the development and implementation of world peace, no hunger, etc, amirite?

I would agree with Archi on this point - there are definitely applications where faster speed would be a massive boon; particularly for people who have huge digital libraries they would like to do cloud based backups with without paying exorbitant amounts of money to accomplish and without having to wait years on upload times. Add into that sharing and engineering application, and computer power and networking speed continue to prove they are woefully inadequate for the tasks we demand of them. The ITER project has developed and utilized specialized highspeed networks and computer processing centers to help with the collection, analysis, and distribution. The setup has allowed project administrators from other countries to have a more hands on approach with development whilst still operating from their home countries.


And sure, I know the response to this will be 'but I don't use/need that'... which is true for most. Right now you don't use/need that. Some people do though, and they prefer to look forward to seeing these things continue to progress while the rest ask 'why should we even bother, I'm never going to need that.' Yet the amusing part is how you can't fathom 'ever' needing it, like the popular urban legend about how MS/Bill Gates once said that '640K is enough, noone will ever need more'. Funny how things change over even a short time period though, no?

[Uzor]

If you want do download full-HD movies or large games, you do need more. And when normal video calls include a full-scale 3D projection, you need more too XD

[Senoska]

I had a 24mb/sec connection for a year.

Didn't even notice when they lowered it back to 8mbs.

In other words- wtf is the point of this?

Are you kidding me? I noticed a drop in my internet speed from 24 to 16 mb/s. Its a huge difference.. Its the difference between downloading a file in 5 seconds compared to 8 seconds, just with this small amount of difference in connectivity, in one file. Add this up over several files/connections and we're talking hours, even days of difference between file transfer. As someone who does a whole lot of upload/download, its very noticeable.

I guess you could translate your post as "I dont know how to internet, whats the big deal?" To those of us that 'internet' regularly, this speed is fucking amazing. To give you some numbers, 1 gigabit is 1024 megabits. So this connection is what, like 15,000x the speed of your internet? Think about the possibilities...

edit:
I think whats interesting is what turns into the bottleneck for computers with speeds like this. What hard-drive can write data this fast? Christ....

[Hyan]

Are you kidding me? I noticed a drop in my internet speed from 24 to 16 mb/s. Its a huge difference.. Its the difference between downloading a file in 5 seconds compared to 8 seconds, just with this small amount of difference in connectivity, in one file. Add this up over several files/connections and we're talking hours, even days of difference between file transfer. As someone who does a whole lot of upload/download, its very noticeable.

You can translate it as "I don't give a fuck". 5 seconds instead of 8? Holy mother of God. An hour longer to download a movie you need to see, like, right now? There are easier ways to ruin your week.

It's not like you can even cap these speeds 100% of the time.

But it sure did get a couple of panties in a bunch. I'll gladly eat my words once I 'need' 15,000x the speed of my current internet.

[Senoska]

I guess I'm just content with waiting for an hour or less to watch everything I'd ever want to watch.

Also first world problems.

First world solutions, actually. Data centers that are set up near the stock exchange are at extremely high prices in order to use their service. This is because stocks are traded in milliseconds. 2-3 milliseconds of latency is the difference between making a cool million, or crashing and burning on the markets. Connectivity is everything. The internet is the organic heartbeat of the world economy. Having speeds like this allows you to basically blast your way through the interwebs. I do a lot of bulk/http requests with my job, and its a noticeable thing when you're trying to do 20-30k requests at a time. With internet speeds like this, I could give fuck-all about what I'm throwing out there. Business would be great!

[Senoska]

You can translate it as "I don't give a fuck". 5 seconds instead of 8? Holy mother of God. An hour longer to download a movie you need to see, like, right now? There are easier ways to ruin your week.

It's not like you can even cap these speeds 100% of the time.

But it sure did get a couple of panties in a bunch. I'll gladly eat my words once I 'need' 15,000x the speed of my current internet.

You're incredibly short sighted if you don't see the benefit of having speeds like this. While you may not 'need' speeds like this in order to check your email or bitch about things on BG, others do. My business works on connection speeds, and in fact, everything I do does. Trading on markets functions on milliseconds. Finishing out a work week for me is starting requests on Monday and waiting until Friday for them to finish. You think those 2-3 seconds don't matter, but they matter a whole lot when you're doing huge amounts of data transfer. Shit, uploading/downloading a large site is usually just sitting there for a few hours while shit downloads before I can actually do anything. A connection speed like this gives me a huge boner. If you don't see it, that is your problem. So bitch more about something you know nothing about, I'm sure it will make you look intelligent.

[Hyan]

You're incredibly short sighted if you don't see the benefit of having speeds like this. While you may not 'need' speeds like this in order to check your email or bitch about things on BG, others do. My business works on connection speeds, and in fact, everything I do does. Trading on markets functions on milliseconds. Finishing out a work week for me is starting requests on Monday and waiting until Friday for them to finish. You think those 2-3 seconds don't matter, but they matter a whole lot when you're doing huge amounts of data transfer. Shit, uploading/downloading a large site is usually just sitting there for a few hours while shit downloads before I can actually do anything. A connection speed like this gives me a huge boner. If you don't see it, that is your problem. So bitch more about something you know nothing about, I'm sure it will make you look intelligent.

I do see the benefits. You and your business on the other hand are a useless waste of space, a perfect example against the utility of these kind of speeds.

As far as a normal consumer is concerned, this is still pretty much worthless. Wait a couple more minutes to watch a movie? baw fucking haw, remember to bitch on fb. You wouldn't even get to the full speeds before the movie was already downloaded...

I sure am happy for corporations.

[Senoska]

yumadbrah