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Sporkman
April 6th, 2008, 02:59 AM
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece


Coming soon: superfast internet

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.

Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high.

This meant that scientists at Cern - where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989 - would no longer be able to use his creation for fear of causing a global collapse.

This is because the internet has evolved by linking together a hotchpotch of cables and routing equipment, much of which was originally designed for telephone calls and therefore lacks the capacity for high-speed data transmission.

By contrast, the grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years.

Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, said: “We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at Cern. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries.”

That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world.

One terminates at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

From each centre, further connections radiate out to a host of other research institutions using existing high-speed academic networks.

It means Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid system – so that any student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up to the grid rather than the internet from this autumn.

Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

“It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere,” he said.

Computers on the grid can also transmit data at lightning speed. This will allow researchers facing heavy processing tasks to call on the assistance of thousands of other computers around the world. The aim is to eliminate the dreaded “frozen screen” experienced by internet users who ask their machine to handle too much information.

The real goal of the grid is, however, to work with the LHC in tracking down nature’s most elusive particle, the Higgs boson. Predicted in theory but never yet found, the Higgs is supposed to be what gives matter mass.

The LHC has been designed to hunt out this particle - but even at optimum performance it will generate only a few thousand of the particles a year. Analysing the mountain of data will be such a large task that it will keep even the grid’s huge capacity busy for years to come.

Although the grid itself is unlikely to be directly available to domestic internet users, many telecoms providers and businesses are already introducing its pioneering technologies. One of the most potent is so-called dynamic switching, which creates a dedicated channel for internet users trying to download large volumes of data such as films. In theory this would give a standard desktop computer the ability to download a movie in five seconds rather than the current three hours or so.

Additionally, the grid is being made available to dozens of other academic researchers including astronomers and molecular biologists.

It has already been used to help design new drugs against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills 1m people worldwide each year. Researchers used the grid to analyse 140m compounds - a task that would have taken a standard internet-linked PC 420 years.

“Projects like the grid will bring huge changes in business and society as well as science,” Doyle said.

“Holographic video conferencing is not that far away. Online gaming could evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could become the main way we communicate.

“The history of the internet shows you cannot predict its real impacts but we know they will be huge.”

thiebaude
April 6th, 2008, 03:12 AM
When?

tdrusk
April 6th, 2008, 03:52 AM
sweet. I can imagine how many distros I could download.

Bubba64
April 6th, 2008, 04:20 AM
Viva Le Higgs Boson good post.

bonzodog
April 6th, 2008, 10:14 AM
The big overlooked glitch in this is trying to get it to the consumer -- How many people actually have fibre right to their front doors?

It would require massive co-operation of the telco's in upgrading the worldwide telecoms infrastructure to fibre right to peoples front doors.

Brand new houses here in Ireland are getting that, but a lot of the upline cable beyond the exchanges is still copper.

The national Telco, Eircom cannot afford to upgrade the lines between exchanges to Fibre.

Kimm
April 6th, 2008, 10:49 AM
The big overlooked glitch in this is trying to get it to the consumer -- How many people actually have fibre right to their front doors?

Pretty much everyone living in Sweden :guitar:

Mazza558
April 6th, 2008, 10:55 AM
This kind of technology sounds similar to BitTorrent in how it works, and I'm sure companies like the RIAA will want to limit the speeds people can get. Business and Politics always get in the way of technological advancement.

fatality_uk
April 6th, 2008, 11:16 AM
THE internet could soon be made obsolete.
Soon, try earliest 2030 for an initial trial, +5 years for national roll out and adoption plan of 5-10 years. :D Statistically speaking, I'll probably be dead by then! Ahh well :D

swoll1980
April 6th, 2008, 11:31 AM
If the accelerator doesn't destroy the universe :)

fatality_uk
April 6th, 2008, 11:37 AM
If the accelerator doesn't destroy the universe

Bearing in mind that current thinking allows for a 12-15 dimensional universe, I bet all the techno boffins at CERN have a "SWITCH TO ALTERNATE DIMENSION" option on thier workstation keypad ;)

Presto123
April 6th, 2008, 11:49 AM
Bearing in mind that current thinking allows for a 12-15 dimensional universe, I bet all the techno boffins at CERN have a "SWITCH TO ALTERNATE DIMENSION" option on thier workstation keypad ;)

*Snicker*

Ebuntor
April 6th, 2008, 12:04 PM
Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

Yeah, right. There goes all our privacy right out the window. Leaving all my personal data on the servers from some company, no thank you. Besides storage space and the transmission speed are two different things.

CouchMaster
April 6th, 2008, 12:12 PM
Bearing in mind that current thinking allows for a 12-15 dimensional universe, I bet all the techno boffins at CERN have a "SWITCH TO ALTERNATE DIMENSION" option on thier workstation keypad ;)

10 dimensional symmetry that fractured (the big bang) because of the high energy needed to retain the symmetry into the 4 known, and - suspected 6 - dimensional Universe that we know and love today. These 10 dimensions must have a place to happen therefore current thinking (string theory) says 11 dimensions - and the math unites and answers all of the age old questions of physics.

swoll1980
April 6th, 2008, 12:12 PM
Bearing in mind that current thinking allows for a 12-15 dimensional universe, I bet all the techno boffins at CERN have a "SWITCH TO ALTERNATE DIMENSION" option on thier workstation keypad ;)

they have said every thing from 11 dimensions to 22. I don't think these guys know a dimension from a hole in the ground (or a hole in the space time continuum in this case)

hessiess
April 6th, 2008, 02:45 PM
Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

no thankyou

chewearn
April 6th, 2008, 02:58 PM
Meh, give me my flying car first, then we talk.

Tundro Walker
April 6th, 2008, 08:33 PM
The greatest technological improvements to mankind have always been in regards to increased communication. The faster / better we can communicate, then the more ideas can be shared and the faster other technologies develop.

* The printed word, and teaching others to read/write helped quash a lot of the Dark Ages.

* The printing press helped quash a lot of the pioneering difficulties.

* The telegraph / telephone helped improve communications over long distance.

* Cell phones made it so folks can brain storm any where, any time with each other.

* The internet made it where folks can share ideas in media format regardless of where or who they are.

* If they increase the speed of the internet, it will just mean faster communication.

Advancements in communication are always good. And yet, I can pretty much imagine most folks are just thinking "awesome, my P2P will d/l lightning fast now!"

If you had told a 14th century scholar that by the 21st century, you could turn on a device, ask it any question you can think of and get back loads of information, they would think you're referring to a crystal ball. If you then went on to tell that scholar that about 99% of folks using that device would simply dig up porn with it ... the scholar would probably commit suicide on the spot.

Sporkman
April 6th, 2008, 08:36 PM
If you then went on to tell that scholar that about 99% of folks using that device would simply dig up porn with it ... the scholar would probably commit suicide on the spot.

Hey, porn is the primary economic driver of new communication technologies & media formats...

We owe a lot to porn.

Tundro Walker
April 6th, 2008, 08:51 PM
Hey, porn is the primary economic driver of new communication technologies & media formats...

We owe a lot to porn.

Economic fact, or sad social commentary. You be the judge.

:)

Pethegreat
April 6th, 2008, 09:18 PM
There needs to be a law that states:


As the number of posts in a thread regarding increses in internet bandwidth and storage, the probably that porn will be mentioned increses exponentially.

I hope that Hard drive capacity will keep up.

xpod
April 6th, 2008, 09:29 PM
Hell i dont know what to do with our 20Mb BB half the time let alone anything faster,although i will probably squeeze the upcoming 50Mb out of our ISP.....just for the sake of it:)
If truth be told though our separate 1Mb line was/is perfectly adequate.

I do like my 5 minute iso`s i suppose.

Tundro Walker
April 6th, 2008, 10:21 PM
There needs to be a law that states ...

The day the world ends ...

"Scientists have isolated the genes that regulate human sexual desire. By switching these genes off, they found the average person became 500% smarter and 1000% more productive. Medical specialists are working to incorporate this genetic therapy in the next round of booster shots for kids, and to keep doing it until all humans are genetically altered to never get turned on. Analysts predict it will be 50 years before this will spread wide enough for the porn industry to get impacted, and cause the collapse of our economic system as we know it."

Bubba64
April 7th, 2008, 12:12 AM
10 dimensional symmetry that fractured (the big bang) because of the high energy needed to retain the symmetry into the 4 known, and - suspected 6 - dimensional Universe that we know and love today. These 10 dimensions must have a place to happen therefore current thinking (string theory) says 11 dimensions - and the math unites and answers all of the age old questions of physics.

String theory was or the multiple theory's one of which went to over 33 dimensions have been shown by Ed Witten to actually be mirror images of each other at least in theory.
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~witten/

Some theorist's think that infinite may be the description for universes and dimensions. The large Hadron Collider though will certainly get us closer to solving some equations regarding yet unseen particles.

Bubba64
April 7th, 2008, 12:15 AM
The day the world ends ...

"Scientists have isolated the genes that regulate human sexual desire. By switching these genes off, they found the average person became 500% smarter and 1000% more productive. Medical specialists are working to incorporate this genetic therapy in the next round of booster shots for kids, and to keep doing it until all humans are genetically altered to never get turned on. Analysts predict it will be 50 years before this will spread wide enough for the porn industry to get impacted, and cause the collapse of our economic system as we know it."

I like the idea of changing peoples ideas of procreation although not genetically, but in the realization of the finite biomass of the earth to support life in a steady rate.

tubasoldier
April 7th, 2008, 12:31 AM
Does anyone else remember back in the late 90's when the US government told the phone compainies that they had to run fibre optic cables so we could have faster internet speeds? Up to 45/MBs is what was touted. That still hasn't happened in the US, I'm not sure how things are in other countries, but getting phone compaines to invest money in fibre optics is like getting water out of rocks.

Tundro Walker
April 7th, 2008, 02:24 AM
Does anyone else remember back in the late 90's when the US government told the phone compainies that they had to run fibre optic cables so we could have faster internet speeds? Up to 45/MBs is what was touted. That still hasn't happened in the US, I'm not sure how things are in other countries, but getting phone compaines to invest money in fibre optics is like getting water out of rocks.

The US government basically gave the telecom companies gratis access to government land to use for building out fiber. The companies did so, in spades, then complained about not being compensated for "their network" use and such.

The gov't granted them all this free land use, because communications lines are a very important part to bolstering military and civil infrastructure. It's like the freeway/highway projects the government sponsored (sponsors). It's meant for civili infrastructure, but can be used for military application if need be.

But, the telecoms are pretty greedy, and while they built out their fiber using huge land grants from the gov't, they want to turn around and charge the consumers an arm and leg for use.

Hold on ... we've had like 5 threads complaining about this stuff in the past. Let's not derail this thread with it.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast entitled "How string theory will revolutionize the internet".