Comcast, CERN speed up the Internet for very few.
By Susan Wilson
Comcast in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, US is speeding up the existing Internet while CERN has created a parallel Internet called "The Grid". Only Comcast’s offering will be seen by everyday users (in one small part of 1 state out of 50) while the CERN project is shared between research and academic institutions in Europe, America, and the Far East.
Comcast, a leading American cable provider, is unveiling its new DOCSIS 3.0 technology, but only in the Twin Cities. This new offering gives lucky Comcast subscribers in Minneapolis-St. Paul "up to 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) downloads and 5 Mbps uploads". With this speed, users can "download a 4 GB HD movie in about 10 minutes" as compared to the 6 hours that it would take with normal 7 Mbps DSL speeds. Comcast has dubbed this "Wideband" as opposed to "Broadband".
Currently, the United States is only two spots away from the slowest average Internet speed in a comparison between the U.S, Canada, Europe and Asia. The current situation as of April 2007 as seen in the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation chart below is abysmal.
The new Comcast "Wideband" when rolled out nationwide will lift the United States significantly in the rankings. The more households and businesses that subscribe to Comcast’s higher speed offering, the higher the U.S. average will climb.
The World Wide Web was created at CERN in 1989 by Time Berners-Lee. Now CERN has developed a high speed parallel Internet that it calls "The Grid." The Grid combines sophisticated fiber optic and routing technology to create an alternate internet that is 10,000 times faster than broad band. This remarkable speed allows movies to be downloaded in seconds as opposed to the projected minutes with Comcast’s new speed or hours under typical American and UK speeds (see above). CERN’s new internet is expected to become active this summer in conjunction with the start of the Large Haldron Collider (LHC). The LHC is a particle accelerator that physicists expect to use to recreate the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, as well as other experiments.
The development of The Grid was necessitated by the need of an internet system that would allow the incredible volume of LHC data to be analyzed by teams of scientists world wide. Since the expected amount of data would overwhelm the current Internet, a better system had to be created. The Grid currently has 55,000 servers set up worldwide with a total of 200,000 projected in the next two years. Although the current Internet can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, The Grid only connects select high speed academic networks in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. Non academics need not apply. The hope is that just as the Internet, originally constructed for academic institutions and research facilities, became accessible to the general public, that The Grid will eventually be extended to all as well.
Either way, those of us that are not located in Minneapolis-St. Paul, or academic community, will have to continue to wait for warp speed internet speeds.
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December 28th, 2008
the thing that is keeping us back in this country is money, everyone wants to make it so we can’t aford thing kind of thing, because if you look at comcasts prices these kinds of speeds would cost hundreds of $$$$$.