How "The Grid" Will Transform The Grid of Second Life

Metaverse developer Rodion Resistance notes recent news of "the grid", a project from CERN that aims to drastically superpower broadband speeds-- so fast, according to the London Times, that "'the grid' will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalog from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds."  (Jumping jack flash, indeed.)  But how will "the grid" impact Second Life, already known colloquially as The Grid?  Rodion Speculates:

With this new and unbelievably faster internet just around the corner, I began to imagine the exciting developments that would occur in virtual worlds, particularly Second Life... Less “lag” - lesser time to wait for textures, prims, sounds, video and other objects... More fluid distributed computing.  Vehicles (and avatars) can now fluidly pass from one sim to another without the awful “hiccups”...

And that's just the start, because he thinks the transformations will be vast.  Read about them all here.

Comments

[Eggy Lippmann]

Not sure what kind of internet you got over there, Hamlet, here we have 24 mbit DSL for 39.90 and everything loads pretty fast. If the asset server cooperates! :D
The main problem with Second Life and lag today is the graphics card.
Even modern low-end cards run Second Life crazy-slow.
Actually, modern low-end cards can run Second Life SLOWER than older cards!
This is because they stopped bundling an adequate amount of graphics memory with the card, and instead are using main system memory for graphics.
It is a slower type of memory, and the data has to travel back and forth across the whole motherboard.

[Hamlet Au]

Ironically, Egg baby, much of the SF Bay Area's broadband is teh suxor.

[Elle Pollack]

@Eggy: 5 megabits is the average top end for home internet bandwidth in the US right now with some ISPs starting to offer "premium" 10mbit lines. Yeah, US bandwidth avalibility sucks.

[Nexii Malthus]

I would like to take a note here that I noticed a comment published on a BBC article of this Grid which mentioned that the Grid is not just a faster internet but a range of technologies and software that let scientists compute the huge data needed for CERN. The faster speeds were accomplished by just basically re-creating the network with better routers and fiber optic cables instead of the telephone cables our current rusting system is based on.

What we need for faster connections is to replace all the current copper cables with fiber optic ones and between all the nodes.

The only way to have faster connections though is to pressurize our internet service providers who are currently extremely reluctant, who are using their time to milk out the money out of their ignorant customer base.

There is also not enough incentive for rivalry to establish to offer better speeds, all we getting are just special offers, nothing new. The customers are just basically being flogged back and forth with silly bonuses and offers without any investment.

[Drw]

Nexii, if we pressurize our ISPs, they'll just go SQUISH and make an aweful mess.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.