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How fast is the Internet? It’s fast… but not “Cheetah-fast”

Cheetah USB driveThe Internet today is certainly faster than the Internet of 20 years ago.

Web Watch remembers using a 2400 baud modem to connect to what was the ‘net back in the day – and that was considered lightning fast for the time.  (Sadly, Web Watch still has that modem in the back closet, just in case our broadband connection dies and we have to resort to connecting to the net the old-fashioned way.)

We eventually got 19,200 baud, and later 56k modems – everyone thought that was as fast as the Internet could possibly go at the time.  We were transferring files in hours instead of days, and that was good enough for us.

But with broadband and wireless everywhere, transferring large amounts of data has become an everyday activity – but some transfers can still take a while to process. 

With that in mind, some enterprising scientists decided to see exactly how long it would take to transfer a large file across the Internet, and compare that to the landspeed of some animals to see which was faster.

And surprisingly, RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT A CHEETAH CAN TRANSFER DATA FASTER THAN THE INTERNET

All the researchers wanted to do was transfer a single 32GB file between two computers that were 1 mile apart. 

At average Internet speeds, it takes about 3 hours to upload the file and 3 hours to download the file (for a total of about 6 hours). 

It only takes about 15 minutes to transfer the file onto (or off) a USB flash drive.

So all you need is a cheetah… or any animal, for that matter… that can transport that 32GB USB drive one mile in less than 5.5 hours and you’ll beat the Internet transfer.  

A cheetah can cover that mile in less than one minute, making file-transfer-by-cheetah the most efficient at 30.9 minutes total (including the USB upload and download).

Running the USB drive by human foot would take about 34 minutes.  Even a tortoise can cover that 1 mile in less than 5.5 hours.

So next time you need to transfer a large file from one place to another, perhaps the Internet isn’t your best option — just have a large USB drive and a roll of duct tape, and you’ll be all set.