This article would be quite enormous if I was to detail every method of transferring data between computers: Nevertheless, the major methods of doing so are worth a mention, ignoring the various data transmission protocols, such as TCP/IP, FTP, etc: –

Quite obviously there’s the internet – which is all very well and good, and a lot of the time is the only method available for transferring data. – For instance in the event of transferring an amount of data across the pond between America and the UK. – But the internet, although getting slowly faster, is, to the average consumer, quite slow. My personal internet connection has rarely peaked at a speed of 1 megabit of actual data transfer per second: That’s approximately a megabyte in 8 seconds. Now if I were transferring a gigabyte of data from America to my box here in the UK it would take me 1000 gigabytes X 8 seconds = 8,000 seconds, or 133.34 minutes. (2.223 hours.) – That’s if the connection reaches the highest speed that it’s ever reached and stays at that speed for that period. Normally it’s an average of about half that speed; so a gigabyte of data would take about 5 hours to transfer in this way. – That’s assuming that the gigabyte of data is a single huge file. 10.000 smaller files would take even longer.

I use BT Broadband as my ISP in the UK; which means that the data is transmitted to me via ADSL over the UK copper-wire telephone network. This limits the transfer speed too: Fortunately I live within a mile of the local telephone exchange. In that fact I’m lucky as maybe as much as two-thirds of the UK population live more than a mile from the telephone exchange and can’t get decent speeds at all via BT Broadband. Also Bt have kindly refused to enable broadband in a number of its smaller outlying, less-used exchanges. Most other ISPs use BT’s copper-cable network to transfer data also.

There is also Virgin Media’s cable broadband in the UK, which boasts download speeds of up to 20 megabits/second (Although in reality it’s usually quite a bit slower.); but the percentage of homes within the UK where this is available is also rather limited. If a home is more than 5 miles outside of a town or city centre then it’s very unlikely that a cable internet service would be available currently in the UK.

Then there’s also satellite internet; such as Sky Internet in the UK. This is usually used by people who live miles from a telephone exchange and well out of town. It’s commonly faster than dialup by a number of times, but factors such as atmospheric conditions and topographical features can interfere with the signal at times and on occasions.

Whilst some countries, such as Thailand, have an internet network second to none; many countries, including the UK and the USA have, to a large extent, a slow network that lags well behind the capabilities brought about by technological advancement, mainly due to lack of investment and political difficulties.

In fact, when I was last  in Africa some 30 years ago, the telephone service kept dying because the natives chopped down the telephone-line poles in the jungle to use as firewood. – I kid you not. That, though, was back in the 1970s, well before the internet was even heard of in Africa. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it still happens today though. – Or some warlord blows up the local telephone exchange and the entire community’s dial-up goes out for a few weeks.

Moving on; let’s take a look at short-range data transmission.

So transferring data long-range via the internet is always currently going to be a slow process. Transferring data locally, however, can be a totally different ball-game.

There are two main methods of data transfer that will get your data transferred to another computer fairly quickly: Both of these involve being on a local network and transferring data via the ethernet connection of your computer, which is at time of writing, still the fastest data-transfer connection on any computer.

An office network can be used; where data is transferred fairly quickly between local machines via a central server, which also acts as a repository or storehouse for much of the data.

Faster yet, though, is a home network: This can be as simple as a pair of computers connecting with one another via a patch-lead, or any number of machines doing so via a router.

Personally on my home network I’ve achieved transfer speeds of 12 megabytes-per-second; which still takes over 1 1/2 minutes to transfer a gigabyte data file; but it’s a lot faster than the 5 hour internet comparison.

Wouldn’t it be good if…

If one was able to transfer data at that speed via the internet? Actually I see no reason why the internet has to be so slow; other than a lack of investment. Indeed it should be possible with today’s technology to transfer data in one’s local area at that kind of speed across the internet without all that much investment; just a bit more than is currently being put in to improving the internet infrastructure.

Even internet data transfer for long-distances and overseas could be faster; perhaps as much as 1 megabyte per second. Indeed it’s feasible that a dedicated data pipe connected to the UK telephone network via BT Broadband could be capable of a much faster local-transfer speed, within an area of, say, 5 square miles. With the proper investment I see no reason why the internet as a whole couldn’t be at least 10 times faster than it currently is. (Except, perhaps, in Thailand.)

When it’s quicker to burn 100 DVDs and send them by snail-mail than it is to transfer the data over the internet, then there has to be something lacking.

What are your thoughts on this subject?