The promise of a really fast Internet is becoming a reality. Imagine being able to download a entire movie in 5 seconds. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, have developed a system called Fast TCP. In the current New Scientist, the technology of 'Fast TCP' is described. Essentially, fast TCP uses the same packet sizes as regular TCP, (approximately 1500 bytes) the hardware that carries messages around the net will still work. The difference is that the software and hardware on the sending computer will continually measures the time it takes for sent packets to arrive, and how long acknowledgements take to come back. This reveals if there are any delays on the line, giving early warnings of likely packet losses. The Fast TCP software uses this to predict the highest data rate the connection can support without losing data.
Since the packets are the same size as those used in TCP, none of the equipment along the internet itself will have to be modified, and no new hardware will be needed on computers receiving the data.
"The first practical test of Fast TCP took place in November at a supercomputing conference. Researchers from Caltech, Stanford and CERN near Geneva in Switzerland, sent data 10,000 kilometres from Sunnyvale, California, to CERN at an average rate of 925 megabits per second. Ordinary TCP managed just 266 megabits per second on the same routes.
By ganging 10 Fast TCP systems together, the researchers have achieved transmission speeds of over 8.6 gigabits per second, which is more than 6000 times the capacity of ordinary broadband links."
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