40 MAXIMUMPC MARCH 2005
SON OF
INTERNET
Everything you know about
the Internet is about to change.
Meet the Grid. BY LUIS VILLAZON
The Internet is full. Full of hackers, spam, weblogs, Counter-Strike
fraggers, pirated MP3s, streaming porn, eBay bargains, IM chat
and, voice over IP. When we were struggling with our dial-up
modems just a few short years ago, all we could think about was
finding a way to increase the bandwidth of our own connection to
the Internet.
Now that more and more of the world has broadband (60 per-
cent of users in the U.S. have it), we’re beginning to realize that it’s
a bit like driving a McLaren F1 in a crowded parking lot: Theoretical
top speed is meaningless when the rest of the traffic is gridlocked.
What we need to do is upgrade the Internet itself, not just our con-
nection to it. In other words, we need some serious lane widening.
Fortunately, a cabal of not-so-mad scientists is hard at
work developing a new infrastructure that will make the current
Internet seem like a back-country hiking trail! Dull technology
journalists have taken to dubbing this effort “Internet Mark II,” but
the pocket-protector set behind it have done a somewhat snap-
pier job naming their project. Known as National LambdaRail
(www.nlr.net), this super Internet is a 10,000-mile-long series of
high-speed links that stretch around the U.S. in a big ring with a
couple of crossbars running north-south (squint your eyes and itINTERNET 2: