A Parallel Internet?
You've heard of parallel computing... how about a parallel Internet?
That's more or less how the creators of "The Grid" are billing the network of fibre optic cables that run from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe, and around the world.
Promising to offer data transfer speeds up to "10,000 times faster than a typical Broadband connection," the hype is assuring us that this new networking technology will "render the Internet obsolete."
Says the breathless article on Techtree.com, "The grid computing project was started around seven years ago by researchers at Cern. They claim "the grid" is so fast it is capable of sending the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. "
We've talked about SETI@home in previous columns; The Grid is along the same lines. Requiring more computing power than the organization (which listens for signals from extraterrestrial life) could afford, SETI@home makes use of home computer's downtime processing power to continue its daily search, spreading the cost and the computing cycles.
The Grid was constructed to do basically the same thing - with the added advantage of superfast connections between CPUs, enabling scientists to have instantaneous access to massive amounts of data all around the globe - without overtaxing anyone's processor or pocketbook.
When designers talk about "replacing the Internet," however, they're really suggesting that the backbone infrastructure - the fiber optic cables and hubs that move the data from place to place so that it can be further distributed to your computer and mine - could become outdated with this newer, much faster infrastructure.
While you and I might notice slightly faster data transfer rates (depending on what kind of equipment is actually connecting to our desktops), the more significant change (already in the early stages of development) in the way we do our computing day to day would more likely have to do with where and how we store our data. Because data transfer speeds would be improved so much, user would find fewer reasons not to rely on shared resources for running applications and storing data - that is to say, rather than run a word processing program off your desktop, you could access one online (as many user now do with Google Documents), creating and storing your document on a remote computer, and probably buying your computing power by the hour, much the way we buy our electricity by the kilowatt hour.
The Grid is slated to go online this summer.
That's more or less how the creators of "The Grid" are billing the network of fibre optic cables that run from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe, and around the world.
Promising to offer data transfer speeds up to "10,000 times faster than a typical Broadband connection," the hype is assuring us that this new networking technology will "render the Internet obsolete."
Says the breathless article on Techtree.com, "The grid computing project was started around seven years ago by researchers at Cern. They claim "the grid" is so fast it is capable of sending the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. "
We've talked about SETI@home in previous columns; The Grid is along the same lines. Requiring more computing power than the organization (which listens for signals from extraterrestrial life) could afford, SETI@home makes use of home computer's downtime processing power to continue its daily search, spreading the cost and the computing cycles.
The Grid was constructed to do basically the same thing - with the added advantage of superfast connections between CPUs, enabling scientists to have instantaneous access to massive amounts of data all around the globe - without overtaxing anyone's processor or pocketbook.
When designers talk about "replacing the Internet," however, they're really suggesting that the backbone infrastructure - the fiber optic cables and hubs that move the data from place to place so that it can be further distributed to your computer and mine - could become outdated with this newer, much faster infrastructure.
While you and I might notice slightly faster data transfer rates (depending on what kind of equipment is actually connecting to our desktops), the more significant change (already in the early stages of development) in the way we do our computing day to day would more likely have to do with where and how we store our data. Because data transfer speeds would be improved so much, user would find fewer reasons not to rely on shared resources for running applications and storing data - that is to say, rather than run a word processing program off your desktop, you could access one online (as many user now do with Google Documents), creating and storing your document on a remote computer, and probably buying your computing power by the hour, much the way we buy our electricity by the kilowatt hour.
The Grid is slated to go online this summer.
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