NASA Internet Speed: How Fast Is It? [It's Really Fast] - Robot Powered Home (2024)

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Back in 2013, news broke of NASA shattering internet speed records. In an experiment, NASA researchers were able to reach up to 91 gigabits per second. To put that into perspective,the average internet speed in the US in 2021 is 44 megabits per second. So basically, NASA’s network speeds back in 2013 were nearly 2000 times faster than today’s average speeds.

It got me wondering how they managed to reach those kinds of speed nearly eight years ago. I wanted to find out if this was the case for all their networks or a one-off experiment.

I looked through official statements, news reports and multiple verifiable sources on the internet to know what was the case, and I will try to present my findings here as best as possible.

NASA proved through an experiment in 2013 on their own ESNet network that the network was able to reach up to 91Gbps, but the researchers did it in a closed, ideal environment where they could control everything.

What Network Does NASA Use?

NASA doesn’t use commercial internet providers like you and me. They don’t contact Comcast to get their internet fixed. They don’t even use the world wide web or the public internet to transmit information.

The public internet is too unsafe and difficult to secure for the type of data they send. The data is highly confidential and mostly classified, so it has to be as secure as possible.

To do this, they use a network called the Energy Science Network or the ESNet for short. It is highly policed, secured by military-grade encryption, and is used primarily for research.

NASA has field centers across the globe, and relaying time-sensitive information across different time zones and locations across the world will require high speeds and security.

It was on this network that NASA researchers attained those speeds. Since this network is built on highly time-sensitive needs, the infrastructure and hardware that support this network allow it to reach astronomical speeds.

Combined with the lower congestion compared to public internet, it can reach speeds that you can’t even imagine doing on public internet.

How Fast is NASA’s Internet?

A common misconception that people have is that NASA’s internet speeds are 91 gigaBYTEs per second and not gigaBITs. So what is the difference, you may ask? To understand that, first, we need to know what a bit and a byte is.

A bit is the most fundamental unit of data in a computer. It has a binary value of either 1 or 0. A byte, on the other hand, is a collection of 8 individual bits. A byte is usually the unit used for data transmission and storage.

Gigabits vs Gigabytes Explained

Since 8 bits make a byte, 1 Gigabit is 125,000 bytes times 1000 equaling almost 125 million bytes or 125 Megabytes. So a speed of 91 Gigabitsmeans its 91 x 125 million, equaling upto 11.375 Gigabytes.

Therefore a 91 gigabitper second speed can transfer 11.375 gigabytesof data per second. Bytes is the more preferred and more well-known unit of data.

This doesn’t take anything away from NASA either, with the average internet speed in the US only reaching 5.5 megabytes per second. Extremely small in comparison.

The 91 GBPS Reality

Even though this was an experiment performed on the ESNet, their regular network speeds won’t be that fast. The experiment was done on a testbed network in ideal conditions with the best hardware as it possibly can be.

This means all the equipment were working at their highest capacity. And it would be risky and very expensive, considering the amount of power to run it at full capacity 24/7. The experiment was just a proof of concept that the ESNet network is capable of very high speeds.

How Did NASA Achieve This Staggering Speed?

NASA researchers ran this test on a testbed network on their ESNet “shadow internet” network. They sent data between NASA’s Goddard Research Centre at Maryland, and a conference in Denver called the Supercomputing Conference 2013. They could achieve these speeds thanks to the low number of hops the connection had to take.

Every computer networkloses time with every network node it stops at, and it is no different for the ESNet network. Since there are not a lot of nodes, the researchers could attain extremely high speeds. As you might have guessed, this is a highly ideal case and would be difficult to replicate it even on the commercial ESNet, let alone on the public internet with millions of nodes all over the world.

Why Does NASA Need Such High-Speed Internet?

The next obvious question would be why NASA spends taxpayer dollars to get faster internet speeds. It is not as if they were streaming movies or playing games over there, so what gives?

The straightforward answer is that NASA deals with a lot of data. Let it be the data from radio telescopes or the high-resolution images from its space telescopes. It even includes the networking they do on the ground, between laboratories and international field centers.

The information they gather daily also needs to be secured because they work on classified or confidential information that will damage national security in the hands of a third party.

They also need this data quick since data from space is extremely time-bound, and delays will cause issues with the experiments they were running or equipment that they were monitoring remotely.

Clearing Up Misconceptions

The speeds that NASA tested back in 2013 are not even the record anymore. Ateam of researchers from Japan managed to beat the record by an enormous margin. They were able to record speeds of up to 319 Tb/s, almost 3,000 times faster.

These speed records get shattered now and then. It just goes to show how rapidly science and technology, especially networking, is growing.

Research towards these fields also trickles down to consumers in the long run. A case in point was optical fiber cables. They were all experimental in the 60s and 70s but are extremely ubiquitous now. The future of internet speeds for the average user is only looking brighter with more research in these fields.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What country has 7G?

As of writing, there is no country with 7G internet. G means generation and comes with a set of specifications that improve internet performance from the previous generation. Currently, 6G technology is in development.

What is the highest speed of internet in NASA?

The internet speed of NASA is exceptionally high thanks to the kinds of data they deal with. Their networks are capable of 91 gigabits per second, as they found out from an experiment they did in 2013. But it does not mean that their entire network is that fast. But understand that they will be faster than your average office network.

What is the world’s fastest internet speed?

The fastest internet speed possible and proved experimentally was reached by a team of scientists in Japan. They managed to get speeds of upto 319 Terabytes per second.

Is 500 Mbps good?

With a speed of 500Mbps, anything that you want to do on the internet is possible at the same time. Netflix recommends 25Mbps for 4K content, and that means you can stream several Netflix streams at 4K quality at the same time, without any lag or buffering.