FedEx Faster Than Internet

[dgridley]

Got large amounts of data to send? FedEx might be faster than the Internet..

When you need to transfer very large amounts of data over the internet, sooner or later you will hit a limit where it will actually be faster to send that data on disks over regular mail (often called sneakernet). Internet transfer rates are simply not enough for large data sets.

Imagine a company with two offices in different cities, perhaps even in different countries. Each office has a 100 megabit internet connection. If the company needs to send a large amount of data from one office to the other, theoretically a 100 megabit connection can muster about 45 gigabyte in one hour if there are no bottlenecks on the way. This ends up being just over one terabyte of data in 24 hours.

In other words, for anything larger than one terabyte, it would be faster for this company to just send the data on disks for over-night delivery.

http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=119

 

[peaches017]

Does this factor in the cost or the convenience? Sure, it might be faster when transferring ridiculously large amounts of files, but then you have to scan / save them to the computer. Just more to think about...

 

[dgridley]

I think with the advent of the internet and such, alot of the old ways have fallen by the wayside when in some instances they actually may be the better method to achieve what's needed...

 

[jdk]

You have to remember they can not max out their connection otherwise their computers are not going to be able to browse the internet.

 

[The Equivocate]

Does this factor in the cost or the convenience? Sure, it might be faster when transferring ridiculously large amounts of files, but then you have to scan / save them to the computer. Just more to think about...

Think about the amount of time it would take to transfer one terabyte of data from some sort of disk to a computer. Then if the sender had to save that TB of data to the disk in the first place, double that time. THEN add that onto the 24 hours. And then it just increases with the amount of data you're trying to send. I'm sure at some point FedEx is still faster but there are a lot more factors than just the actual size of the data that needs to be sent.

 

[smilgy]

what if u were sending hdd's? u wouldn't need to actually need transfer it, you could just connect it to the pc and its yours

 

[ChrisChris]

what if u were sending hdd's? u wouldn't need to actually need transfer it, you could just connect it to the pc and its yours

It just doesn't make sense cost wise to send HDDs through the mail every time you want to send data. Plus (as far as I am aware) there are no 1TB HDD's (not down here anyway) so that would mean having to send a few of them.

 

[Peter]

It just doesn't make sense cost wise to send HDDs through the mail every time you want to send data. Plus (as far as I am aware) there are no 1TB HDD's (not down here anyway) so that would mean having to send a few of them.

The maximum amounts that seem readily available at the moment are 750 GB.

How many companies would actually want to send such amounts of data anyway? Also sending the HDD is not exactly a solution if the HDD gets damaged or lost you would lose all of the data so you would still need to copy it even if it were onto another HDD.

 

[kemjika11]

it sounds interesting, but i think its simply ludicrous. wheels on a road can't be faster than wires.