Swedish woman gets world’s fastest Internet connection
STOCKHOLM (AP) — She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg’s 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.
In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer — many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.
Jonsson and Lothberg’s son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.
The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said.
“We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed,” he said.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Internet | California | Web-based | Peter | Karlstad | Hafsteinn Jonsson | Sigbritt Lothberg
Peter Lothberg, who is a networking expert, said he wanted to demonstrate the new technology while providing a computer link for his mother.
“She’s a brand-new Internet user,” Lothberg said by phone from California, where he lives. “She didn’t even have a computer before.”
His mother isn’t exactly making the most of her high-speed connection. She only uses it to read Web-based newspapers.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Another source:
Last summer a 75-year-old woman from Karlstad became the envy of internet users worldwide.
With her blistering 40 gigabits per second connection, Sigbritt Löthberg had the world’s fastest internet connection – many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user had experienced such a high speed.
So, after nine months with the ability to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds or access 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously, how has Sigbritt’s life changed?
Not much, according to Hafsteinn Jonsson, who is heading up the fibre network operation for Karlstad Stadsnät.
“She mostly used it to dry her laundry,” he told The Local.
“It was a big bit of gear and it got pretty warm.”
Sigbritt’s son, Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg, was behind the project, which was intended to demonstrate how a low price, high capacity fibre line could be built over long distances. Löthberg has now taken the equipment up to Luleå, in the north of Sweden, for further testing.
“The project was a huge success,” said Hafsteinn Jonsson, who explained that his department now measures its history in terms of ‘Before Sigbritt and After Sigbritt’.
“Apart from the death of Ingmar Bergman, this was the biggest story to come out of Sweden in 2007. We used to get all these detailed questions about what we’re working on – now we just mention Sigbritt and everybody understands.”
The secret behind the ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.
According to Karlstad Stadsnät the distance is, in theory, unlimited – there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.
Sigbritt may have been denied her world-beating internet link but she still has an admirable 10 gigabits per second connection. And there may be another surprise in store for her.
“We’re considering giving her a 100 gigabits per second connection in the summer,” said Hafsteinn Jonsson.
“Then she’ll be able to dry all her neighbours’ laundry too.”
After going through the news I felt like dying and reincarnating in Sweden as a neighbour of the grandma. Surely, she would have lend me her connection! Anyway, the two questions to crop up in my mind are:
1) What modem is she using? Most of the modems have some limitations. So, her modem must be tweaked to receive such breathtaking connection.
2) What is the speed of her hard disk? To transfer data from one disk to another some time is consumed. So to transfer 700 MB of data under 2 second the hard disk also needs to be a very powerful one.
