Think your home broadband connection is fast? Imagine exceeding that speed by more than 20,000 times. That’s the new world record for sending data across the Internet—a feat notched by two well-known scientific research centers last month. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN) said the new record doubles the previous top speed and was accomplished in a nearly 30-minute transmission over 7,000 kilometers of network between Geneva and a partner entity in California.
CERN, which has laboratories located on the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, said it transmitted 1.1 terabytes of data at 5.44 gigabits per second to a lab at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) on Oct. 1. This rate is similar to transferring a 60-minute compact disc within one second—a task that is completed in about eight minutes on standard broadband. The new top speed is also equivalent to transferring an approximately 90-minute-long DVD film in seven seconds—a marked difference from the 15 minutes it usually takes to download a full-length DVD from the Internet using existing technology.
