• monotremata
    link
    fedilink
    3611 months ago

    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.

      • @rockSlayer
        link
        English
        1711 months ago

        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]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1711 months ago

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

    • @fishos
      link
      English
      611 months ago

      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/