this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's also used for sending huge amounts of data long distances. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." That's usually attributed to Andrew S. Tanenbaum, but wikipedia follows that with "other alleged speakers include..." so take that with a grain of salt. They do note that the first problem in his book on computer networks asks students to calculate the throughput of a Saint Bernard carrying floppy disks.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do we assume the Saint Bernard is spherical and ignores air resistance?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, it's for real. The bandwidth of sending a truckload of disks to a destination can get to literally Tbps speeds. Latency is a different problem

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

Oh, I'm aware. Just making a tongue in cheek physics joke since they said he put that problem in a textbook.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Amazon is using trucks to ship hard drives for the largest data transfers. It's more efficient than doing it over internet. They also offer a service where they will put the data you want in a drive, mail it to you, and after you're done, you send the drive back.

https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)