Do you think your internet connection's fast?

Think again. By now, I'm guessing most people have high speed internet, or Cable/DSL. You're quite acquainted with it because it's fast, and it gets what you need on the internet done without having to wait an unreasonable amount of time. Well, now that reasearchers at the Terabit Optical Ethernet Center, or TOEC, at the University of California, Santa Barbara are developing the Terabit Ethernet, your Cable/DSL internet may not seem as fast as you think.

Today's Internet can't handle the increase in internet users and content over the next 10 years. Right now, the most common speed of internet connections is 100 megabytes. However, the fastest speed you can get is 1 gigabytes speed. By the year 2015, TOEC will have developed the Terabit Ethernet, running at a speed of 10,000 megabytes, or 1,000 gigabytes. Your internet connection will "fly," loading pages faster than ever seen before.

In order to be able to run 1 Terabit connections, scientists must develop a compatible network card for your computer, network switches and routers to send the signal, and Cable companies to send the signals. On top of all that, where does it all come from before the Cable companies? It comes from its source, a server holding all the pages and images of a website. Scientists at TOEC will also need to build an energy-efficient way to power and cool the systems.