Had broadband for a while? Taking it for granted? Does everything seem slow again? Coming: an entire movie in seconds:

The Fast TCP system, designed by a team of researchers at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, runs on the same Internet infrastructure currently used but is designed to be much quicker.

Internet traffic is controlled by a system called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which was developed in the 1970s and breaks down files into small packets of about 1500 bytes.

"The sending computer transmits a pack, waits for a signal from the recipient that acknowledges its safe arrival, and then sends the next packet," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

But if there is no reply, the packet is sent again and again at successively slower speeds until it arrives. So minor problems can make connections sluggish.

....When the researchers tested 10 Fast TCP systems together it boosted the speed to more than 6,000 times the capacity of the ordinary broadband links.

"Caltech is already in talks with Microsoft and Disney about using it for video on demand," the magazine added. [Reuters]