Say goodbye to the ethernet..

Overheal

BY the time Australia upgrades its broadband, the network could be obsolete - thanks to a high-speed internet developed in Geneva.
The new network, called "the grid", is more than 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection.
It is a system of fibre-optic cables and modern routing centres that mean movies and entire music catalogues can be downloaded in seconds, not hours.
The grid, devised by scientists at Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and home of the internet, to handle massive amounts of data from their Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator, could also transmit holographic images and provide high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.
Physics professor David Britton from Glasgow University, a leading figure on the grid, told The Times that it "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.
Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, said that the LHC produced too much data for computers at one site to handle.
"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," he said.
"The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries."
Already more than 55,000 servers have been installed across the world and another 200,000 are expected within the next two years.
Ian Bird, project leader for the grid, said people would be able to store many gigabytes of information on the internet.

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!

That is, if they dont destroy us all.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

you wanna link to the article instead of just quoting?

AlmightyCushion

It's a lot easier and cheaper to upgrade an exchange for adsl then it is to provide fibre to each home in the country.

Overheal

Mordeth wrote: »

you wanna link to the article instead of just quoting?

NO!

Rb

Holographic porn would be interesting.

seraphimvc

seriously,fibre-optic tech is no news....just,i hope we can have a better speed here,,,

galwayrush

I'm just thankful we're not on diall up anymore.:rolleyes:

LuckyCharms

galwayrush wrote: »

I'm just thankful we're not on diall up anymore.:rolleyes:

You must be one of the lucky ones then

biko

CERN rocks

Naikon

FDDI ftw!
Seriously though, this is a development that will be far off for europe, let alone in this country where you can't get a decent broadband connection outside major towns and cities without manual "intervention".

Eircom might roll out fiber to every home by 2050/60 if we are lucky:pac:
At the moment, I would not even consider fibre to be any real option, especially in the home.
I wish I lived in japan, 100MB/s connections are common apparently:(

TPD

Broadband speeds would be a major factor in choosing a location to move to.

Looks worse in writing than it does in my head.

Gummy Panda

Naikon wrote: »

not even consider fibre to be any real option, especially in the home.
I wish I lived in japan, 100MB/s connections are common apparently:(

Imagine how fast you could download porn!! :pac:

Time to rip out the central heating boiler and replace it with a water cooled supercomputer!!

Rovi

Naikon wrote: »

Eircom might roll out fiber to every home by 2050/60 if we are lucky:pac:
At the moment, I would not even consider fibre to be any real option, especially in the home.

There's a fibre cable as thick as your arm not 50 meters from where I'm sitting right now, and there's a junction on it approximately 100 meters away.
Last year, I finally managed to 'upgrade' from a 512Kb satellite connection to a 1Mb wireless one; DSL or anything else over the copper wire is out of the question :mad:

Some night, under the cover of darkness, I'm heading out with a bundle of fibre out of the Christmas tree, a pliers and a roll of insulating tape...

phantom_lord

galwayrush wrote: »

I'm just thankful we're not on diall up anymore.:rolleyes:

+1

Black Swan

What's the ethernet?;) Is that something Heston used when communicating with the apes?

Spyral

There's a fibre cable as thick as your arm not 50 meters from where I'm sitting right now, and there's a junction on it approximately 100 meters away.
Last year, I finally managed to 'upgrade' from a 512Kb satellite connection to a 1Mb wireless one; DSL or anything else over the copper wire is out of the question

aye when my dad was doing some diggin (he works a JCB) he came accors a cable that they never told him was there fortunatly he didn't slice it - it apparatny was all the fibre going to dublin...makes we wonder why we cannot tap in

JavaBear

this yoke?

Irish Halo

Overheal wrote: »

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!

That is, if they dont destroy us all.

Sorry to disappoint that article is mostly crap.

Web != Internet
Grid != Replacement Internet

Grid = Internet tool like the Web

This link explains the Grid and the GridPP project which Tony Doyle and Dave Britton are involved with (as am I just so my bias is revealed)

A blog post on my blog (sorry) goes through the Times article and explains the problems with it.

Sherifu

Irish Halo wrote: »

A blog post on my blog (sorry) goes through the Times article and explains the problems with it.

Shameless blog pimpage. Down with that sort of thing. :pac:

seamus

This isn't about bandwidth or download speeds. It's about grid computing. Which is basically distributed computing on a ridiculous scale.

It's actually an ironic trend - when computers first came out, they were monolithic structures that supported many people logging in at once and it did all the work. Then the PC came along and computers became, "One user, one machine", where the terminal you sat at, did all of the work for you.

Now we're going full circle. From the user's perspective, they'll have a dumb terminal and a massive monolithic computer will do all of the work for them. In reality, it's not one machine, but thousands (and probably millions eventually). The work is divided up and performed by many of the machines. To the end-user, it looks like they're interacting with one big machine, the details are hidden from them.

The idea of instant media content on demand stems from this division of labour. Instead of a one-to-one relationship between the viewer and the content, the content can be spread over hundreds of machines. Each machine supplies a small part of the content, meaning that the content can be obtained far quicker and the overall resources per request used are trivial.

Bandwidth to the home will have an impact for the home user - you can still only get data as fast as it can be shoved down your tv cable/phone line. It's the application of "The grid" that will encourage providers to increase speeds. Because the processing power is handed off to the grid, appliance can use less powerful components, therefore becoming cheaper, encouraging more appliances to use the grid for their purposes and so increasing the number of Internet appliances in the standard home. So every new TV you buy, comes with support for the grid, where you get your TV content from. This forces bandwidth providers to upgrade their networks. Which in turn encourages more frivilous use of that bandwidth, such as for toasters.

tbh

Irish Halo wrote: »

A blog post on my blog (sorry) goes through the Times article and explains the problems with it.

don't apologise - that's a smashing post on your blog.

Overheal

Deleted User wrote: »

Time to rip out the central heating boiler and replace it with a water cooled supercomputer!!

You mean you havent started heating your boiler with excess heat from your PC?

How inefficient.

Eric Cartman

whos betting eircom will still impose a 10gb cap

Overheal

Wtf is up with NTL or someone offering an 8mb downspeed with a 10gb cap? Its laughable. Its that commercial where the poor nerd is considering online dating even though 3 girls are trying to pass him signals.

Eric Cartman

Eric Cartman wrote: »

whos betting eircom will still impose a 10gb cap

:pac: You'd use up your monthly allowance in a couple of minutes..

ScumLord

seamus wrote: »

Bandwidth to the home will have an impact for the home user - you can still only get data as fast as it can be shoved down your tv cable/phone line. It's the application of "The grid" that will encourage providers to increase speeds. Because the processing power is handed off to the grid, appliance can use less powerful components, therefore becoming cheaper, encouraging more appliances to use the grid for their purposes and so increasing the number of Internet appliances in the standard home. So every new TV you buy, comes with support for the grid, where you get your TV content from. This forces bandwidth providers to upgrade their networks. Which in turn encourages more frivilous use of that bandwidth, such as for toasters.

We're doomed! We're doomed, we're doomed!! I had a dream about toasters taking over the world, and you know that if it's in a dream it must be true.

Maximilian

I thought CERN were busy getting ready to make black holes. Which I'm looking forward to so my robotic namesake can become a reality.