Billgates6060 2011-12-16 00:55:36Scientists break world record for data transfer speeds
Current fibre optic services offer speeds of up to 1Gbps
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Researchers are claiming a new world record for data transfers over long distances.
Data was moved back and forth at a combined rate of 186Gbps (gigabits per second), fast enough to transfer two million gigabytes of data or 100,000 full Blu-ray discs in one day.
It could pave the way for networks with standard transfer rates of 100Gbps.
That would speed up the sharing of scientific research, such as that at the Large Hadron Collider.
Future networks
The tests involved sending data between the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, and the Washington State Convention Centre in Seattle.
The team achieved two-way data rates of 186Gbps, breaking their previous record of 119Gbps set in 2009. The data's fastest speed in a single direction was 98Gbps.
By comparison the fastest speed offered to the UK public is a 1.5Gbps broadband connection trialled by Virgin Media in East London.
The distances spanned nearly 131 miles (212km) and relied on the latest optical equipment, highly tuned servers and ran over a 100Gbps circuit, set up by CANARIE, Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network.
In an even larger demonstration, researchers transferred massive amounts of data between a booth at the SuperComputing 2011 conference in Seattle and other locations within the US, Brazil and Korea.
The experiments brought together physicists, computer scientists and network engineers from a range of institutions, including the California Institute of Technology, the University of Victoria, the University of Michigan, the European Centre for Nuclear Research (Cern) and Florida International University.
"Our group and its partners are showing how massive amounts of data will be handled and transported in the future," said Harvey Newman, a professor of physics who headed up the physicist team.
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