What kind of future internet connection speeds will you be getting? Well, if the Supercomputing Bandwidth Challenge is anything to go by, something like 101 Gbit per second (Gbp/s) is pretty close to the mark.

That was the sustained data transfer rate recorded between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles during the challenge. This is more than four times faster than the previous record set last year. Made possible because of the Fast TCP protocol developed by Professor Steven Low and his Caltech Netlab team, the data transfer speed is equivalent to downloading 3 DVD movies every second! It was made possible by the se of seven 10 Gbp/s links to Cisco 7600 and 6500 series switch-routers provided by Cisco Systems at the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing. There were also three 10 Gbp/s links to the SLAC/Fermilab booth near Chicago. The applications of these kinds of internet transmission rates are staggering.