Swede used 40Gbps internet connection to dry laundry

Chances are, you could think of a million and one ways to totally take advantage of having a 40Gbps internet connection installed in your abode, but for one Sigbritt Löthberg -- who actually had such a setup -- she chose to take advantage of it in quite a perplexing way. Reportedly, the 75-year old dame wasn't too interested in downloading an entire HD film in two seconds or having ping times more minuscule than the brain can fathom; rather, she chose to use the excess heat emitted from all the kit shoved in her house to "dry her laundry." Unfortunately, the poor lady has had the gear removed from her domicile for further testing in another location, but according to Hafsteinn Jonsson, who is heading up the fiber network operation for Karlstad Stadsnät, they're considering "giving her a 100Gbps [link] in the summer -- then she'll be able to dry all her neighbors' laundry too."

[Image courtesy of TheRedWoodMotel]

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 31st 2008 8:58AM]

Pron faster then anyone could possibly imagine!

[Big Ed @ Mar 31st 2008 9:21AM]

I don't know, I can imagine pretty fast.

[phanbouy @ Mar 31st 2008 4:07PM]

it helps to have a giant space bar like in the retro puter above

[shamrock593 @ Mar 31st 2008 9:04AM]

She can dry my laundry any day!

[Raymond @ Mar 31st 2008 10:19AM]

Ew man! She's 75 years old! You can have her.

[TomTom2007 @ Mar 31st 2008 11:32AM]

I'm pretty sure he literally meant "drying his laundry any day"...

[Charlie Calhoun @ Mar 31st 2008 3:43PM]

Agreed. Clothes that he's still wearing isn't "Laundry"... yet. So it's not like he'll be naked. And while the clothes are drying I'm sure he'd want to visit some of the internet during his stay.

[redlukas @ Mar 31st 2008 9:06AM]

where is a server that seeds at 40 40gbps?

[T-Bone @ Mar 31st 2008 9:46AM]

That's what I'm wondering. I have a 6mbps connection and I rarely use all of it. I occasionally get a fast torrent and the only servers I've seen with consistent speeds over 700kbps are the ones 2 blocks away at the local university.

[gian @ Mar 31st 2008 10:19AM]

Exactly. Besides, ping times are a limitation of end stations at that point, and will not get any faster with a fat pipe.

Gian

[kyle @ Mar 31st 2008 10:23AM]

Usenet ftw

[Abuzar @ Mar 31st 2008 11:22AM]

I'll show you a fat pipe.

No homo.

[Jesse S @ Mar 31st 2008 12:05PM]

T-Bone, that's because of your client.

I use a private bit-torrent network with a few people to transfer large databases, and I have a 100mbit box for it. With rTorrent, I regularly use 80+mb/s.

[computer.dude.28 @ Mar 31st 2008 5:09PM]

T-Bone, try downloading something from Microsoft! I only have 10Mbps here so I only see 1.13MB/s on my downloads but that's still a hell of a lot faster than downloads from most other places.

[Jonathan Keim @ Mar 31st 2008 9:08AM]

I want to know what kind of hard drive she uses to record "an entire HD film in two seconds"

[Flashpoint @ Mar 31st 2008 10:14AM]

goddamn - I hope that isn't your real picture.

[Kozzi @ Mar 31st 2008 12:35PM]

RAID

[Deputy Doffoos @ Mar 31st 2008 1:38PM]

[Flashpoint
goddamn - I hope that isn't your real picture. ]

I agree!

[Chris Macdonald @ Mar 31st 2008 3:49PM]

why do you care?

[Homeboy @ Mar 31st 2008 9:08AM]

"downloading an entire HD film in two seconds"

That's only theoretical. Good luck finding a harddrive which can write 10-15GB/sec.

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 31st 2008 9:12AM]

Well you could always make yourself a RAM disk and then have a script that transfers it over to a HD once the download is complete. *shrugs*

[0mega @ Mar 31st 2008 9:17AM]

Big honking RAID array. And I know a few people with those that wouldn't mind lending me a server if I had all that throughput 0_0 God damn that would rule...

I can just imagine it now... More bandwidth than it takes to get in to mordor, but All I have is wet clothing V_V Sad panda for sure.

[joshky @ Mar 31st 2008 9:08AM]

damn...downloading porn, torrenting (+superseeding), AND　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｈａｖｅ　ｅｎｏｕｇｈ　ｂａｎｄｗｉｄｔｈ　ｔｏ　ｓｔｒｅａｍ　ｍｕｓｉｃ　ａｎｄ　ｐｌａｙ　ＣｏＨ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｐｅｏｐｌｅ　ｈａｌｆｗａｙ　ａｒｏｕｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｇｌｏｂｅ．．．．

[w00t @ Mar 31st 2008 9:18AM]

Pfft, 10mb is enough for that... works fine for me!

It is low latency and symmetrical but I can have a few http/nntp connections, some torrents, online radio and still game with 20ms pings so you're going to have to up the ante if you want to saturate this pipe... with more than soggy laundry! :)

[Joshua @ Mar 31st 2008 9:11AM]

haha... this year you will NOT April fool me :D

[w00t @ Mar 31st 2008 9:22AM]

It's March :)

[iofthestorm @ Mar 31st 2008 9:22PM]

This was on slashdot ages ago, so it's definitely real.

[Adam @ Mar 31st 2008 9:16AM]

*sits in the corner in the fetile position with his 10mbs internet....* holy crap, 40gbs thats unbelievable, and 100gps... wow i didnt even know you could get that, my hard drive isnt even 100gb's... lol i could fill it up in less than a second!

[Backlin @ Mar 31st 2008 9:18AM]

There's a difference between "bits" and "bytes" bro.

[bjorn_ahlm @ Mar 31st 2008 9:21AM]

Gb and GB isn't the same thing you know.

[packetsniffer @ Mar 31st 2008 9:42AM]

he he he

[thd4 @ Mar 31st 2008 9:48AM]

100GbE is still in its infancy - I don't think the standard has been set yet, but there are companies out there that are working on it. Found this on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiS0RoyiqlA

[Jesse S @ Mar 31st 2008 12:08PM]

bjorn, actually, gb, GB, gB, Gb, and etc. mean nothing. There is NO standard that says a little b is bits, and a big B is bytes, or vice versa.

I wish people would stop spreading that crap around.

I just write mbyte when I'm talking about megabytes, and mbit when I'm talking about megabits. I wish more people would do the same.

[däniel @ Mar 31st 2008 12:20PM]

mbyte? as in millibyte? wow that's a new one :-D

/kidding

[Benson @ Mar 31st 2008 1:44PM]

@Jesse S
You are wrong; there is a standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541
Yeah, I get tired of people spreading such stuff, too, so please stop. Writing them in full for clarity is fine, but there is a standard for those who choose to abbreviate.

[Frank Sandqvist @ Mar 31st 2008 9:23AM]

pfft. Swedes.

[Kyle Burghart @ Mar 31st 2008 1:17PM]

No kidding. Why was a 75 year old lady testing such a fast connection. My 75 year old grandmother still says computers are a fad and will fade away.

[DeadlySeven @ Mar 31st 2008 9:42AM]

Although this may not be april fools, it is April here. I'm guessing you have heard of the whole time zones thing

[Aaron @ Mar 31st 2008 10:00AM]

Apparently you haven't heard of the whole Engadget is located in the US thing either.

[cbhwr @ Mar 31st 2008 10:54AM]

Yeah, DeadlySeven, stop browsing US sites!...

(For those not getting it, this is really a comment to Aaron to stop thinking so damn locally)

/G

[BobTurbo @ Mar 31st 2008 9:43AM]

That is like a billionaire winning the lotto.

[YAYO @ Mar 31st 2008 10:47AM]

no, it's not.

it's like buying a porsche and just using the radio.

[Jagannath A @ Mar 31st 2008 1:49PM]

No.... more like buying an A380 and just using the manuals as pillows...

[Joe @ Mar 31st 2008 2:47PM]

That's like an old lady using her modem to dry her laundry.

[CeeJay @ Mar 31st 2008 6:55PM]

It's like using your CD-ROM tray as a cupholder.

[SurKaz @ Mar 31st 2008 9:45AM]

That's what you get when your kids a Internet Giant and has some pull.. Internet connections so fast you don't know what to do with it..

[DiscoCat5 @ Mar 31st 2008 9:58AM]

April Fools Suckas from Aus. Telstra wont even turn ADSL 2+ on in our area because of fear of competition, all the equipment is there they just suck. and who cares if i went to a different ISP. i would be more inclined to go with telstra if they got the service running as fast as they could to as many people as they could. now if htye ever turn it on i WILL go with another ISP just to spite them. but congratulations to that lady, shes using something the "youth movement" of today know nothing about... INGENUITY!

[DWells55 @ Mar 31st 2008 10:28AM]

40Gbps and she dried laundry with it. I mean I understand if she didn't have any use for it, but such wasted power... She should've just run several thousand dedicated servers for various games simultaneously. Probably would've dried her laundry faster too. Or she could've at least seeded a couple of (read: all) Linux distros.

[cubing @ Mar 31st 2008 10:50AM]

1996 called.....it wants that computer back.

[malloc @ Mar 31st 2008 10:54AM]

No April fools here. The old lady is actually the mother of Peter Löthberg who one of the founders of the swedish internet backbone and network guru extraordinaire http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=33&page_number=4
The installation in his mothers house where actually a fieldtestinstallation for Cisco true to Peters spirit of show don't tell (where another example is when the beurocrats of the early swedish networkproviders argued over how to syncronize their neworks, Peter himself then went on a quick trip to Russia and bought himself a surplus atomic clock that he hooked up - problem solved.)