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Scientists at Cern, the research facility behind the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have created a faster, more instantaneous Internet.

Dubbed The Grid, the new network uses fibre optic technology to enable its users to download files the size of high definition films in seconds. Thats about 100GB in the time its taken you to read this sentence.

Put simply, grid computing allows computers to share power over the Internet, while the Web allows them to share information over the Internet, according to the Cern Grid website.

Research, research, research
The Grid, as it exists today, is currently used by research scientists to collate data on the LHC and the masses of information the Worlds largest physics experiment is generating.

Speaking to The Times, Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project gave some indication of the scale of change The Grid could bring in. Holographic video conferencing is not that far away.

Online gaming could evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could become the main way we communicate.

While your average chess-mastering supercomputer can handle the odd barrel-load of information, the LHC is generating so much information that even the most powerful supercomputers would struggle to cope.
Think of all that power
By combining the machines networked to it, anyone using The Grid would have an unprecedented amount of processing and computing power available to them.

Imagine the machines used to create the effects on Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean films and then double it. Thats the kind of power each user of The Grid has at their disposal.

At the moment, The Grid is the exclusive tool of the LHC research scientists, engineers and pharmaceutical researchers, but it already has implications for us humble net-users.

The Grid is coming
A number of communications companies are working on applying dynamic switching to its net services; a technology which creates dedicated channels for people wanting to download films and other large files exclusively.

In fact, were already seeing something of The Grids influence in fibre optic broadband, currently being rolled out across the country.

http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/features/Grid.php