Huge bandwidth? For the price of the gas!

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 8:18 pm

Someone (I forget who) once said, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a car full of hard drives."

OK, so I want to work out how big that bandwidth is. let's work it out. lets take a large station wagon, and load it to the gunwalls with 200GB HDDs.

How many will fit inside the car? If we use a bit of padding to separate the drives, we can count on putting around 2000 or so inside a fully loaded wagon. That works out to be 200 GB x 2000 = 400,000,000,000,000 Bytes or 400 Terabytes (TB).

Let's say we need to transfer the data 500 kilometres at an average speed of 90Km/h. That's a travel time of 5.5 hours, or 330 minutes. Let's be pessimistic and say it takes a combined total of 4 minutes to remove a HDD at the start, and install it at the end - and only one guy is doing it. 4 x 200 = 800 minutes.

So we can move 400 terabytes in 1130 minutes (18.8 hours or 67,800 seconds).

400,000,000,000,000 / 67800 = 5,899,705,015 Bytes/second

That's 5.9GB/s or 47,197,640,120 bps.
It's equates to a DVD every second.

I could live with that.

Conveniently, it's almost exactly 1/3rd of the bandwidth available over the Southern Cross Cable which connects New Zealand to the USA. WHOA.

I wonder how many DVDs you could fit into that same car? Yes, I know, it's full of Hard Drives! We'd take them out first...

ccb056 · Post by **ccb056** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 8:38 pm

Mobi, you must get really bored sometimes.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 8:44 pm

This is in the tech forum why?

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 8:55 pm

Dammit, threads like this makes me wish Stiny wasn't in boot camp right now.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:14 pm

MD-2389 wrote:Dammit, threads like this makes me wish Stiny wasn't in boot camp right now.

Stingy*

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:25 pm

what did stingy poo do?

Instig8 · Post by **Instig8** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:23 am

Don't you need to account for the time required to transfer files on/off the vehicle? The car will have to transfer to another medium. With fiber or copper, the data is offloaded as fast as it is received. No?

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:12 am

a DVD a second over fibre isn't that far-fetched. Just not widely availible.

Ace: Stingy joined I think the Army. Or the Air Force.

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 6:02 am

Heh. Mobi, you should patent that idea as a new form of asynchronous data transfer and make millions!!!11

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 6:40 am

Just hope your car doesn't get in a wreck and wipe all your data

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 8:05 am

woodchip wrote:Just hope your car doesn't get in a wreck and wipe all your data

Does that qualify as a hard drive crash?

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 8:29 am

That sounds great, Mobius, but I think some latency problems would arise when it comes to gaming.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:14 am

And consider the heat build up if youre actually running the drives while driving.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:38 am

Another brilliant idea from NZ!

snoopy · Post by **snoopy** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 11:10 am

crackhead.

Nitrofox125 · Post by **Nitrofox125** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:04 pm

wtF Mobi..... Lol. Yeah, sell a "new way you have to transmit 5.9GB/s!"

I want to get my hands on one of these Southern Cross Cables... run it to my house

I bet running a T1 down in NZ must be pretty freakin expensive, no?

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:22 pm

fliptw wrote:Ace: Stingy joined I think the Army. Or the Air Force.

Army. He should be close to halfway through boot by now.

Vindicator · Post by **Vindicator** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:48 pm

I chuckled.

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 10:57 pm

Well if you want to be anal, it's not really bandwidth in as much as throughput. You're not transferring a dvd of data in the span of a second, which is what bandwidth would imply, but you are getting that much throughput given that period of time.

But either way, the lag will kill you.

Instig8 · Post by **Instig8** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 11:16 pm

"90Km/h" Well, you ain't doing that around here, especially in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Sage · Post by **Sage** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 8:51 am

Perhaps a helicopter would be a better transport solution. Or Supersonic jet. Or even better, HYPERSONIC! Yea. Hypersonic.

Nitrofox125 · Post by **Nitrofox125** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 11:03 am

Hypersonic == Supersonic

Hyposonic == Subsonic.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 3:05 pm

Top Gun wrote:
woodchip wrote:Just hope your car doesn't get in a wreck and wipe all your data
Does that qualify as a hard drive crash?

LOL!

No - we'd use sorbathane padding, so even a major crash wouldn't damage the data. Remember, most HDDs, in powered off mode are capable of withstanding shocks measured in hundreds of G's (i.e. a drop on 1 meter onto a concrete floor) without dying.

It's just an interesting mental exercise - and yes - of course it is "bandwidth", it's just VERY HIGH LATENCY bandwidth. And it's only designed to move incredibly large amounts of data, over relatively short distances - where latency is not an issue.

This sort of service would be ideal for Tier 1 Corporate clients which have to to move terabyte databases across short distances, to secure storage locations.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 3:19 pm

The WD2000JD weighs in at 1.6lbs/.73kg. At 2000, you're hauling over a ton and a half-- 3200lbs, or 1460kg.

Richard Cranium · Post by **Richard Cranium** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 3:47 pm

Mobius wrote:we can count on putting around 2000 or so inside a fully loaded wagon. That works out to be 200 GB x 2000 = 400,000,000,000,000 Bytes or 400 Terabytes

I think you need to also consider the weight of 2000 hard drives. Lets assume that you are using a Seagate drive like http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/man ... ata_pm.pdf that weighs 1.4 lbs or 635 grams. 2000 of these drives would be too much for most wagons that I know of. You might be able to put 1000 of them in and be ok. Just don't hit any bumps on the road.

RC

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 4:29 pm

Well then, make it a Super Duty.

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 4:44 am

i'd prefer a large catapult, or perhaps pneumatic air cannon that fires single HDDs, or perhaps a lashing together of multiple HDDs.
and then on the other side we can catch them in mid air with 2 helicopters with a hookline strung between them. it'l work i'm sure

and if you were t go with Mobi's idea, how would you hack?

"ok, we arrange the HDDs together as a large giant Badger..."

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 2:20 pm

roid wrote:i'd prefer a large catapult, or perhaps pneumatic air cannon that fires single HDDs, or perhaps a lashing together of multiple HDDs.
and then on the other side we can catch them in mid air with 2 helicopters with a hookline strung between them. it'l work i'm sure

Better yet, bring out the old V-2 rockets and fire them back and forth.

When they get close to their target, it'll open a hatch and drop the hard drive out a little hatch and it'll float down on a parachute.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 3:01 pm

1.5 metric tons is no trouble for a grunty station wagon with uprated suspension.

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 4:05 pm

Even if those drives are hot swap, you'll have a nice long time getting the data onto and off of them.

Huge bandwidth? For the price of the gas!

Huge bandwidth? For the price of the gas!

Re: Huge bandwidth? For the price of the gas!