Internet Connection of 40Gb/sec Dries Laundry

A 75-year-old Swedish woman has the world's fastest internet connection - at a torrent-busting 40 Gigabits per second - 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.

Sigbritt Löthberg of Karstad has never had a internet connection before, but she just happens to be the mother of Peter Löthberg, an internationally renowned expert in optical networks who works for Cisco, and who developed a new modulation technique with which data can be transferred directly between routers up to 2.000 km apart. In theory there is no limit to the distance that data could travel at this high speed - provided optical cables are in place.

To test the system he arranged to hook-up his mother through the local council's network.

So after nine months with the ability to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds or access to 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously, how has Sigbritt's life changed?

Not much, she found a novel use for her high-speed equipment by turning the world's fastest internet connection into a tumble dryer.

Sigbritt Löthberg used her blistering home network for more mundane tasks. "She mostly used it to dry her laundry," Hafsteinn Jonsson, a spokesperon for fibre network operator Karlstad Stadsnät told Swedish website The Local. "It was a big bit of gear and it got pretty warm."

"We're considering giving her a 100 gigabits per second connection in the summer. Then she'll be able to dry all her neighbours' laundry too."

source: PcPro