Physicists Set Record for Network Data Transfer

A group of scientists and researchers, led by a team from the California Institute of Technology, have set a new data transfer world record. While I appreciate them trying to use layman terms when explaining how much data can be transferred at 186Gbps, I think it is high time we started using a measurement most of us can instantly comprehend...like Pm² (porn movies per minute). At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day.