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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology have figured out how to re-architecture IP networks in order to increase data speeds by at lest an order of magnitude. Details of how they did it exactly are still somewhat confidential thanks to a non disclosure agreement, but here’s the basic idea: Today’s networks, whether they’re wired or wireless, transmit data in what’s known as a packet. Not all packets gets sent successfully, so the network often has to resend those dropped packets. This is called packet loss and it causes network congestion. These kids said to themselves why are we sending packets in the first place? Why aren’t we sending formulas that describe a series of packets? Sending the mathematical representation of a bunch of packets is not only less intensive, but if one of these so called “coded TCP” packets is lost, then simple math can be done to figure out what was missing. Continue reading “Researchers at MIT use math to increase wireless data speeds by an order of magnitude”