"New Web Protocol May Leave DSL in the Dust"

[stilz]

With the click of a BIC, speeding along the information superhighway may begin to feel like zooming down Germany's no-holds-barred Autobahn.
BIC-TCP (binary increase congestion transmission control protocol) is a new data-transfer protocol that "makes today's high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) connections seem lethargic," say computer science researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU).
Lots of SLAC
In a recent Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) study, BIC-TCP "consistently topped the rankings in a set of experiments that determined its stability, scalability and fairness in comparison with other protocols," explained NCSU spokesperson Jon Pishney.
SLAC researchers tested six other new protocols from such universities as the California Institute of Technology and University College, London.
"BIC can achieve speeds roughly 6,000 times that of DSL and 150,000 times that of current 56K modems," said NCSU computer science professor Injong Rhee, who developed the protocol with fellow NCSU colleagues Khaled Harfoush and Lisong Xu.
The new super-speed protocol would be useful to "many national and international computing labs now involved in large-scale scientific studies of nuclear and high-energy physics, astronomy, geology and meteorology," Pishney added.
Typically, Rhee said, "data are collected at a remote location and need to be shipped to labs where scientists can perform analyses and create high-performance visualizations of the data" that may include satellite images or climate models.
"Receiving the data and sharing the results can lead to massive congestion of current networks -- even on the newest wide-area high speed networks, such as ESNet (Energy Sciences Network), which was created by the U.S. Department of Energy (news - web sites) specifically for these types of scientific collaborations," explained Harfoush.
From New Protocol to Old Proto-Cold
TCP is so 80s it may be obsolete today.
"TCP was originally designed in the 1980s when Internet speeds were much slower and bandwidths much smaller. Now we are trying to apply it to networks that have several orders of magnitude more available bandwidth," Rhee told NewsFactor.
"Essentially, we're using an eyedropper to fill a water main," Harfoush added. "BIC, on the other hand, would open the floodgate."
Living up to its name, BIC gets its speed from a binary search approach -- a common way to search databases -- that rapidly detects maximum network capacities with minimal information loss.
"What takes TCP two hours to determine, BIC can do in less than one second," Rhee said. "While this might translate into music downloads in the blink of an eye, the true value of such a super-powered protocol is a real eye-opener."
Rhee and his colleagues have high hopes for the BIC protocol, which they believe "might even help avoid a national disaster."
For example, Pishney told NewsFactor, "the recent blackout that affected large areas of the eastern United States and Canada underscored the need to spread data-rich backup systems across hundreds of thousands of miles."
With network speeds doubling roughly annually, "performances demonstrated by the new protocol could become commonly available in the next few years, setting a new standard for full utilization of the Internet," Rhee said.

source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...=7&u=/nf/23720

... How can a change in protocol increase speed by "6000" times that of DSL and "150,000" times that of 56k?? Even though i know squat about networking, I'm still amazed...

[Takmadeus]

Damn, it must be hella fast... i wonder how is it to surf the net with that connection

[Bahamut_Xero]

Originally Posted by Takmadeus

Damn, it must be hella fast... i wonder how is it to surf the net with that connection

about the same, instant. the only real upside would be for file trading.

[Metalmurphy]

Yeah i saw something about this a long time ago but it said to be available near 2010 so... well its only obvious u get great connections by then

[Solid_Snake]

I wonder how much will it cost then??

[stilz]

if it's a protocol change, shouldnt it be 'free'...? ;D

[Snake785]

Those kinds of speeds would probably seem slow in 2010

[Syed Fawad]

Damn. I still haven't tasted broadband and now we have a broader band....

[l3illyl3ob]

seeing as this is a protocol change, we still need the means to actually transfer data as fast as the protocal can allow, right? That could take ages. Our current modems, lines, and even hard drive speeds will limit the protocol, so i highly doubt we'd see anything extremely significant immediately after the protocol is introduced to the public.

[stilz]

Hum, I took the article to mean that, after changing to the new protocol, the current medium (DSL, 56k etc.) will be able to go that fast. Any chance of this happening? Again, I'm totally clueless in networking.

[Solid_Snake]

This could be the answer to the LAG in MMORPG's

[WindHydra]

I think the title of the article is misleading O_O
I think it's like changing the "eye droppers" to "pipes," so if there is just enough water for the eyedropper, the pipes are quite uselss. Correct me if I misunderstood.

[FLaRe85]

The article is indeed misleading. Check out http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/...nt.htm#xtocid5. From what I understand BIC-TCP is supposed to be some kind of extension of TCP so it would operate on OSI layer 4, while DSL is a layer 2 data link protocol. There's no way they can be directly compared. It would be akin to comparing HTTP and Cable Internet.

[Gamer1]

there are already alot of protocols out there that leaves dsl in the dust. take SONET (oc-48 standard) for instance, it has maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2488.32Mbps.

Originally Posted by stilz

source: [url]How can a change in protocol increase speed by "6000" times that of DSL and "150,000" times that of 56k?? Even though i know squat about networking, I'm still amazed...

it can reach that kind of speeds by using other mediums such as optical fiber, and maybe getting rid of error correction checks.

[FLaRe85]

Originally Posted by Gamer1

there are already alot of protocols out there that leaves dsl in the dust. take SONET (oc-48 standard) for instance, it has maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2488.32Mbps.

You have to consider that OC fiber lines are VERY expensive and thus not practical for home users. I'm pretty sure this article is talking about a performance increase in consumer-class broadband, not business-class.

[wise_evian]

alot of lag coming off of mmorpgs is not from the connection.

[Solid_Snake]

Oh I forgot its from their server