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World's Fastest Internet Cafe 176

Posted by CmdrTaco from the like-i-needed-another-reason-for-coffee dept.
Thyrus writes "An internet cafe offering connections 50 times faster than typical broadband services has opened in Cornwall. Computers at Goonhilly satellite station, on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, are connected to BT's global internet protocol network. That means users can download data at speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps). It is thought to be the first time such high speeds have been seen at a UK internet cafe. The service will be free to visitors."
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World's Fastest Internet Cafe

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  • Hmmmmmm too much hype (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:22AM (#15621341) Homepage Journal
    First, I am glad they said in the UK, because 100mbit cyber cafes aren't special everywhere [world66.com].

    Also, I notice they have had to tip toe around what it can be used for:

    Adrian Hosford of BT said: "It would be possible to use the cafe's computers to download in less than 15 minutes a file the equivalent size of the DVD version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with its 19,000 illustrations, 629 audio and video clips and 100,000 articles.

    It seems like they are trying almost too hard to explain how quick it is, afterall, I never rate my downloads in terms of how many "dvd copies of a paper encyclopedia with illustrations and video clips" I just say its shit-hot.
    We need it in terms we can understand like how many TPG/s can we view?
    will google earth run smoothly without appearing to break up or pixelate no matter where I zoom or rotate to?
    can I wipe out my friends in CS:S by having a l33t connection?

    Another article I was reading earlier about this mentions why the special people were chosen to open it:


    The new internet café will be officially declared open by Helston Community College pupils Chloe Smith and James Evans, both aged 17, who have demonstrated outstanding acumen in the field of information technology.

    from here [cisco.com].

    (Yes, sisco appear to be hyping this more than the BBC, but then again they supplied some of the high tech equipment.

    • Re:Hmmmmmm too much hype (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tomknight ( 190939 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:36AM (#15621482) Journal
      But the best part of the Cisco release: "The first antenna, known as Arthur, was built to track the Telstar satellite and received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States in 1962. Arthur today is a grade II listed building and is still in operational service." Now I might be bit of a saddo but I actually found that interesting.
    • It would be possible to use the cafe's computers to download in less than 15 minutes a file the equivalent size of the DVD version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with its 19,000 illustrations, 629 audio and video clips and 100,000 articles.
      But how much is that in Libraries of Congress?

    • Re:Hmmmmmm too much hype (Score:5, Funny)

      by revlayle ( 964221 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:56AM (#15621617)
      ...I never rate my downloads in terms of how many "dvd copies of a paper encyclopedia with illustrations and video clips"...

      That's exactly correct. You measure them in "Library of Congresses"... duh!

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by utopianfiat ( 774016 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:22AM (#15621342) Journal
    The world's biggest Adult Theater is opening up next door. Coincidence?
  • Is this really the world's fastest? It doesn't seem that fast; in Japan they're getting gigabit connections at home.

    • Re:World's fastest? (Score:3, Informative)

      by bcat24 ( 914105 )
      RTFAS (Read The F***ing Article Summary):
      It is thought to be the first time such high speeds have been seen at a UK internet cafe.
      Emphasis mine.
      • But the article is "World's Fastest Internet Cafe" according to ./ mods. ... but then again we know how reliable they are, eh?

      • Re:World's fastest? (Score:3, Informative)

        by bcat24 ( 914105 )
        Damn, "at a UK internet cafe" was supposed to be in italics. Oh well.
      • RTFAH (Read the f****** article headline)

        Sorry, I mean, I know this guy clearly didn't read the summary, but in his defense, the *headline* does say "World's Fastest Internet Cafe." Clearly, the people who write the ./ headlines need to read the article summaries.
      • Someone's nicked your emphasis, mate. And before you ask, it definitely wasn't me.

    • Re:World's fastest? (Score:4, Funny)

      by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @12:10PM (#15621711)
      Well, hey, tentacle hentai doesn't download itself...

  • Can't be cheap? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by neonprimetime ( 528653 )
    The service will be free to visitors.
    61 dishes

    For how long will it be free? I can't image the 61 dishes being cheap to maintain?

  • Not that impressive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CBHighlander ( 925941 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:28AM (#15621397)
    100Mbps connections are not that uncommon. Besides, it's the overall download speed that counts, and that is often determined downstream from you local connection. The bandwidth bottleneck is rarely (if ever) your local connection speed.

  • They forgot... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:28AM (#15621399)
    Ok, you have this blazingly fast connection at the internet cafe...

    What server, gaming or otherwise, will be able to transfer information that fast back?

    I do have to say that this connection would be perfect for the final destination for the "relaying" internet connection in the $100 MIT laptop.

    Joe
    • Haven't you been reading Slashdot recently? There was an article about Bittorrent [datacenterknowledge.com] getting gigabit worth of capacity.

      ...

      Besides, even old people in Korea get gigabit access in their cybercafes these days :-)

    • Re:They forgot... (Score:3, Informative)

      by 1984 ( 56406 )
      Actually there are a few that can. Our office network is piggybacked on our mid-size data center, which has enough upstream link capacity that the 100Mbit/s desktop LAN is the slow bit. Downloading Apple software updates (Akamai), various Linux ISOs from mirrors (for example) we get several MByte/s throughput onto the desktop. Never *quite* maxing out that 100Mbit/s portion, but above 50Mbit/s.

      That's in San Francisco, so YMMV, but there are sites out there that can feed at high rates and don't seem to throt
    • Uhh plenty. 100 Mbits isn't all that fast in terms of non-consumer internet connections.

      Basically what happens is a game company either brings in a commercial line, or co-locates a server. For smaller titles it's probably the latter in which case they'll likely have anywhere from single OC3 to multiple OC192's worth of bandwidth (but pay per byte).

      If it's a big title, they might bring in their own line (I can't say how often this would happen though) in which case they'd have the entire thing to themselve
    • Ok, you have this blazingly fast connection at the internet cafe...
      What server, gaming or otherwise, will be able to transfer information that fast back?

      You apparantly haven't used many usenet servers that host binaries ;)
    • No one server can. But it's an internet cafe. While you may not be able to max out that connection alone, a cafe full of people can. Especially when they all are interested in maxing out the speed (While the hype lasts, atleast) or just viewing lots of videos.

      Oh, and gaming servers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a decent DSL connection and these fat pipes. You rarely need broadband for online games. Gaming sites like FilePlanet, though, that host the latest demoes (You know, the ones that
    • What server, gaming or otherwise, will be able to transfer information that fast back?

      Camfrog. [camfrog.com] Each video stream takes up 50KB/s and that's PER PERSON WATCHING YOUR LIVE VIDEO FEED. I can chew up 2 terabytes of bandwidth in less than three days with a popular Camfrog chat room of my own.

  • in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by revery ( 456516 ) * <charles@NoSpam.cac2.net> on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:29AM (#15621407) Homepage
    In other news, if they notice a suspicious looking network cable snaking out to the curb and in through a barely opened car window, it might mean that this [slashdot.org] former St. Petersburg, Florida resident has moved to the UK, and is, apparently, still not a coffee drinker.

    • Problem is that the cable would also have to traverse several miles of dirt tracks, cross several miles of sheep infested fields and dodge hundreds of trac'ers and comboine 'arvsters ohh arrr

      Huff

  • Moving in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by infosec_spaz ( 968690 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:29AM (#15621410) Homepage
    So...it is free for guests, what if I want to move in? Would I have to pay for it :o)

  • YES! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gerddie ( 173963 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:29AM (#15621414)
    bistromathics is the answer. Finally, they understand ...

  • 100mbit? WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ossifer ( 703813 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:34AM (#15621461)
    What's the purpose? Reading emails really quickly? I mean what kind of activity (other than nefarious) does one really need that requires that speed, when sipping coffee?
    • Downloading starbucks latest revenues figures?
    • Because it was an already existing center of high speed data connectivity and so they thought it would be a nice perk to set up a few PCs in the lobby and run a free internet cafe. It's not like they took an existing regular internet cafe and then decided it should be 100Mbit.
    • One needs 100Mb to the desktop to advertise BT and Cisco's superiority in press releases.

    • What's the purpose? Reading emails really quickly? I mean what kind of activity (other than nefarious) does one really need that requires that speed, when sipping coffee?

      So far, everybody's response to you has been sarcastic, but I can see a reason why. With the way cafes are heading now, it's no longer just a place to get a cup of coofee. You can buy music and videos now in some of the cafes in the US. Not to mention the fact that most cafes are already filled with laptop users and not much else. I

    • that's keeping the average US broadband speeds so low. What company in their right mind is going to ramp up their speeds noticeably higher than their competitors if the potential for piracy is so high? In fact, couldn't offering such blatantly huge bandwidth be falsely viewed as facilitating piracy under laws such the DMCA?
    • Let me tell you a story about the rest of the world, or, well - my little corner of it (namely Stockholm, Sweden).
      We have 5 or 6 major internet cafés in this little town, and all but one of them have 100Mbps pipes.

      What's the purpose?
      Maybe it's because our idea of a internet café is a gaming center with 100+ stations.
      Most games these days "require" more than a 512kbps pipe to run properly.

      The one I used to work at saw peak traffic of around 50Mbps, regular traffic was around 30 - 35Mbps.
      When you ge

      • Let me tell you a story about the rest of the world, or, well - my little corner of it (namely Stockholm, Sweden).

        Ah, Tjockhult...

        We have 5 or 6 major internet cafés in this little town, and all but one of them have 100Mbps pipes. What's the purpose? Maybe it's because our idea of a internet café is a gaming center with 100+ stations. Most games these days "require" more than a 512kbps pipe to run properly.

        Ah, I see, but are these 08's playing together/against each other?

        The one I used

    • I mean what kind of activity (other than nefarious) does one really need that requires that speed, when sipping coffee?

      You don't drink much coffee, do you?
    • From my understanding 1080i requires over 20Mbits/sec throw in 1080p and higher capacities, maybe better frame rates and we can max it out today. What about background torrents? Caching other movies perhaps? Something like RDP with video support? Streaming US Channels through your RDP session @ home to your cafe in england? How about actual work, data intensive work? 100 megabyte binaries flying around? I could go on and on, no matter how much bandwidth you dream up there will be far smarter people dreaming

  • Free super-fast internet... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by celardore ( 844933 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:35AM (#15621477)
    But how much does a cup of coffee cost??

  • Goonhilly? Lizard Peninsula? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bunions ( 970377 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:39AM (#15621501)
    are you kidding me?

  • Yihaa, finally (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bromskloss ( 750445 ) <auxiliary,address,for,privacy&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:40AM (#15621507)
    ...I can download inordinate amounts of images and movies to.. my screen? Or can you take it with you somehow?
    • Duh, floppy diskettes. They're small, cheap, durable (just don't put them near magnets, powerlines, or small children... don't drop them... and... basically don't even handle them), and you can hold 1.44 MB per disk!

    • Re:Yihaa, finally (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheBiGW ( 982686 )
      I've been there not so long ago. All the PCs are iMacs (there are about 15 in total). The base units are locked away in a 'pod' display type thing so there is no access to USB ports or floppy discs or anything like that. Whatever you download you can't take with you. Also it's fairly heavily censored using a websense [websense.com] based proxy so don't think for a second you'll be downloading hundreds of megs of mp3s or anthing like that.

  • Is it still that fast? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jeffmeden ( 135043 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:40AM (#15621512) Homepage Journal
    Is it me or does it look like that backhoe just took a big bite out of the dish in that picture? Wonder how many megabits you can get with a a 5' section missing from your receiver?

  • Net Neutrality (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Gotung ( 571984 )
    An internet cafe can find a way to make money while offering service like this for free to it's customers.

    And yet the poor ol' telecoms are having such a hard time making money due to Google stealing their bandwidth.

    Bandwidth that both Google and end users already pay the telecoms for.

  • obquote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:43AM (#15621532) Homepage Journal

    I first heard of Goonhilly from a hardly-noticed story I once read. Not being a European, I had to look it up at the time to see what the hell it was.

    The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them -- which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.

    No real relevance, I just like the name Goonhilly.

  • wtf? (Score:5, Funny)

    by breckinshire ( 891764 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @11:47AM (#15621562) Homepage
    Computers at Goonhilly satellite station, on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall...
    Really, now, you HAVE to be making this up...

  • Goonhilly? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's an odd name. I'd have called it "Chazzwazzer".

  • This screams publicity stunt (Score:5, Funny)

    by 99luftballon ( 838486 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @12:07PM (#15621683)
    Why would you need a connection that fast in an internet cafe? Users will be checking mail and news, not downloading "Cornish gone Wild" Vol 3.

  • BT (Score:2, Insightful)

    by booch ( 4157 )
    BT's global internet protocol network

    That may be the most verbose/obscure way of saying "the Internet" that I've ever seen. And why do they imply that BT owns it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:BT (Score:2, Informative)

      by TheBiGW ( 982686 )
      The whole place is owned by BT. I've visited and there is BT branding everywhere.

      The 100mbit is probably with reference to the LAN the PCs are located on. When I surfed on the iMacs there it certainly didn't feel like the fastest internet surfing I've done.

  • -Yawn- (Score:4, Informative)

    by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <101retsaMytilaeR>> on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @12:14PM (#15621741) Homepage Journal
    Who cares? I can barely tell the difference between my old 4 megabit connection and my current 10 megabit connection. Servers can't even typically send it that fast. It only comes in handy when I'm doing multiple downloads at the same time.
  • The service will be free to visitors.

    "Visitors" or "customers"? There is a distinct difference, mainly the latter pays money to the business for some coffee and gets the internet perks along with it.

  • Can't Wait (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @12:21PM (#15621804)
    Can't wait to do this wirelessly on my 802.11b notebook.
  • The activity centre was quite boring, as was the tour, and the selection at the cafe. The gift shop was a complete sell-out, they sold telephones! Anyway, the cyber cafe was not a pleasant experience, mainly due to the 'new' keyboards. They're made of pressed metal, like public phones, meaning that you can't achieve any decent typing speed. The keyboard is missing the ALT key, instead they had the bright idea of replacing it with a "www." key. The keyboard was embedded into the wall and was at a very steep
  • Somebody go start up a Counter Strike server on those puppies.

  • 4 gig connection in 2001 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skidv ( 656766 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @12:52PM (#15622064) Homepage Journal
    A company I worked for (now closed) delivered 4 gigabits of ethernet connectivity to the buildings it lit in 2001. We designed and built our own gigabit ethernet DWDM injectors to link in-building Cisco 3508 switches with Cisco 6509 switches in the CO. One of our customers was Web2Zone (an Internet Cafe) at 62 Coopers' Square. We never saw the kind of bandwidth spike that indicated they used even 1/1000th of the bandwidth, except when they caught code-red or some such Internet worm. We believed that the limitation was the destination server bandwidth. To compensate for slow servers on other providers, we made extensive use of static page caching to speed performance and reduce our bandwidth costs.

  • "Web 2.0" sites tend to constrained by server load, not outgoing bandwidth. With all that extra server-side work, servers are busier than ever. Notice how many more sites load slowly today. Sometimes you'll even see a page load stall because some JavaScript is waiting for an ad server. (Watch the bottom bar in Firefox to see what you're waiting for.)

    For overloaded database-driven sites, page load stalls make the Web look like it's 1997 again. Craigslist [craigslist.org] is really hurting during busy periods.

  • The new internet cafe was officially declared open by Helston Community College pupils Chloe Smith and James Evans, both aged 17.

    It has been named the Goonhilly House of Porn. Blank CDs and boxes of tissues will be on sale in the lobby.

  • "Computers at Goonhilly satellite station, on the Lizard peninsula"
    Is that next to Sunshine island on the peppermint sea?
    I have to say that I wish I could get that kind of bandwidth here.

  • Since December of last year, Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget have upgraded all 10mbit customer feeds to 100mbit downstream (10mbit upstream) connections free of additional charge. For this connection, I pay 350 Swedish Kronor per month, and this news would never turn up on the Slashdot front page.

    Bredbandsbolaget serves over 300 000 households in Sweden, a nation of around 9 million. It's not some curiosity out in the boondocks or goonhills or whatever you call'em.

  • Cornwall. Goonhilly satellite station. on the Lizard peninsula.

    Is the ministration of funny names next to the minister of funny walks?

    Just curious...
  • where a cup of coffee and a doughnut you wanted are waiting for you even before you even make your order. Oh, and they also have an internet of some sort.
  • This is the UK we're talking about here. By coffee they probably mean instant Nescafé. No, that'd be London. This is as far as you can get from London in the South West. So we're probably talking about instant coffee from some non-name brand, the equivalent of Rola Cola [wikipedia.org]. Whatever, it's probably not worth traveling there for either the coffee or the internet connection. Probably nice scenery though.
  • I operate a Cybercafe [geekerz.us] (along with two partners) in Springfield, Missouri USA.

    We have 100 megabits of upstream bandwidth. I've sustained downloads of more than 50 Mbps.

    The scary thing is, we get that kind of bandwidth at T1 prices [springnet.net] here from our local utility company [cityutilities.net] (ignore the prices on their site, they're way out of date).

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