Another watershed - the 1 Gb download
Today I embarked on my first 1Gb download.
1 Gb.
This is the beta release of the WinFX software development kit - a DVD image weighing in at 1081 Mb. Previously, my largest download was the US Naval Observatory A2.0 stellar astrometric catalogue - a database containing the coordinates and other details of 55 million stars. The USNO A2.0 data is about 8 Gb but usually fills 13 CD-ROMs and comprises 12 individual .ISO images plus some odds and ends. So while USNO A2.0 remains the largest download, this new WinFX SDK images is the largest individual file I've ever downloaded.
It says a lot about the computing industry, the Internet and the adoption of broadband networking technology such as ADSL that we can now download 1 Gb files. I remember my first job out of university my computer had a 1200 baud Hayes Smartmodem and I used to baulk at doing a 100 Kb download. Now, 1Gb doesn't really seem all that bad. My download manager, ReGet Deluxe, is currently downloading 20 streams in parallel over my 2Mbps ADSL connection. It's screaming along and estimates just another hour and a quarter until completion. The USNO catalogue, by comparison, took about three days using FTP (the bandwidth was throttled at the remote end).
Man, 1 Gb in less than an hour and a half. The world just got smaller.