Led by OpenDNS, Google and content delivery networks, Global Internet Speedup launched today, August 30, 2011, with the intention of making the web faster. This should help to decrease the time it takes to load web pages, and should help to increase download speeds.
So how does it work? It’s actually pretty simple. Content delivery networks (CDNs) now deliver content to users based on the DNS server location. This may be a great distance from the computer. The Global Internet Speedup works by allowing the DNS server to forward the first three octets of the user’s IP address to the web service that is being targeted. This is enough to determine the country in which the user is located, and allows a local cache to deliver the requested content or website.
Have you ever grown frustrated upon noticing that your 20Mbps internet connection is downloading at a couple hundred kilobytes? This may be because you are downloading the content from an international source, which may mean slower speeds. By using a local cache to download the same content, it not only reduces the stress placed on international connections, but may allow for greater use of national networks.
The impact on users in the United States may not be very noticeable, but it allows users in the UK and other parts of Europe to obtain data from more local sources instead of going across the Atlantic to download a file. Not everything is affected by this change, though. You may notice higher speeds only if you’re using a DNS server that belongs to Google, OpenDNS or one of the participating CDNs.
Usenet users who use premium services like ThunderNews are allowed speeds as high as their internet connection allows. As the Global Internet Speedup project continues, the internet could continue to get faster, which could benefit users of Usenet.
