Bigger, Better, Faster And More! Why The Caltech Data Transfer Record Will Matter (Eventually).
As the Internet has evolved, one of the ongoing challenges users have had is with the speed at which they are able to send and receive data. Internet transfer speeds have increased, usually to keep up with the growing file sizes of new programs and applications. Just as the first modems would take days to transmit and receive over the phone lines the complicated files you use today, greater bandwidth for data transfers provided by fiber optic cabling will someday be entirely obsolete. Many scientists and engineers are deep at work on creating faster, more efficient means of data transfers.
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Florida International University, CERN, and the Universities of Michigan and Victoria, among other partners, have set the newest record in data transfer speeds. In a controlled experiment, the researchers have effectively achieved a data transfer speed of 186 gigabits per second.
While this news is setting the geek world ablaze, you may wonder what it means to you. The most prominent example the scientists are using to express what this transfer rate means is that a network with a 186 Gbps transfer rate would be able to exchange the equivalent amount of data as one hundred thousand Blu-Ray discs. Still not impressed? Consider the 4G networks for smartphones that have been highly-touted this year. To be considered a 4G network, the network must run at 100Mbps to 1 Gbps. That means that the experiment performed at the Seattle conference was 186 times as fast as the standard 4G smartphone network. The service you get at peak times on your 4G network . . . the technology developed by the research team is 1860 times as fast as that!
The experiments clearly have both a fascinating theoretical application as well as real-world potentials. If the Internet has changed how people live and do business, the potential networks that could form using the technology that set the 186 Gbps record could change revolutionize every industry that relies upon information technology.
While those potentials are certainly appealing, do not look for a network to carry 186 Gbps speeds anytime soon. The experiment was just that and at this point, the consumer need for such a network is exceptionally low. While scientists at CERN are likely to use some adapted version of the experimental network to relay information coming out of their super conducting super collider, the average citizen will probably not see this technology applied to the consumer market for decades.
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