The Speed Fantasy

The Speed of India

Guess what's the speed of an average netizen in India? 128 kpbs? Oh! Your new broadband connection gives you a speed of 256 kpbs. Very good! And your office connection is 512 kpbs you say. Very good!

Folks a bullock cart moves so does a jet. There is "movement" in both. The difference is "speed". A beggar lives on the road. A millionaire lives in a mansion. Both live yet the "quality" of their lives is light years apart. India, being billed as the new Mecca of enterprise, IT giant and other fancy talk, needs to take note of what speed and quality really mean. This is what is real speed is. Read on

The Real Speed

Let your imagination run wild. How fast can your internet get? Let's say you are currently using so called "broadband" of 256 kpbs, what's your wildest speed fantasy? 1000 kpbs i.e. 1gb line? 2gb? Ok let's make it 5gb? Can you imagine a speed of 9 GBPS? Yes that's right, the speed of over 9 GBPS has been achieved.

Internet2, a non-profit consortium which specializes in data transfers for universities around the globe, has this week announced a stunning new record speed of 9.08Gbps - equal to 272,400 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s).

The New World Record

For the first set of IPv6 records, a team from the University of Tokyo, WIDE Project, NTT Communications, JGN2, SURFnet, CANARIE, Pacific Northwest Gigapop and other institutions collaborated to create a network path over 30,000 kilometers in distance, crossing 6 international networks - over ¾ the circumference of the Earth. In doing so, the team successfully transferred data in the single and multi-stream categories at a rate of 7.67 Gbps which is equal to 230,100 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s). This record setting attempt leveraged standard TCP to achieve the new mark.

The next day, the team used a modified version of TCP to achieve an even greater record. Using the same 30,000 km path, the network was able to achieve a throughput of 9.08 Gbps which is equal to 272,400 Tb-m/s for both the IPv6 multi and single stream categories. In doing so, the team surpassed the current IPv4 records, proving that IPv6 networks are able to provide the same, if not better, performance as IPv4.

What's Next?

According to researchers this record for Internet 2 is unlikely to be broken due to cost-benefit etc. But one does hear that the consortium is planning the construction of a new experimental network Internet 3. Guess what will the speed of this be? Hold your breath it would be 100 Gbps that's almost 400 times of the broadband speed we get in our homes today!

The Last Word

The laboratory is a wonderful place. A sheep's part can be fitted in a rat and a rat's heart can be fitted in a lion's. A lion can squeak and a rat can roar. The real test is what happens outside the laboratory. Folks if I get a 2 gb connection in India in the next one year I call it nirvana.

Puneet Mehrotra is a web strategist at www.cyberzest.comand edits www.thebusinessedition.com you can email him on puneet@cyberzest.com.

First Published: Apr 26, 2007 21:36 IST