Google’s Next-Gen of Sneakernet from Wired reports that Google is going to help the Space Telescope Science Institute transfer 120 terabytes of data, which is reportedly the largest data transfer to-date. They coined the transfer of huge amounts of data “FedExNet.” This effort is to be lead by Chris DiBona of Google, and his process for the data transfer is explained as follows:

(1) You ship “both the PC and array to teams of scientists at various research institutions” (2) You connect those devices to “local servers to the array via an eSATA connection” (3) You conduct the data transfer locally (4) You send back the drives to Mountain View (5) Google copies “the data to Google’s servers for archival purposes”

Now, if scientists need this data, Google would just reverse this process to send them the data.

Why isn’t the Space Telescope Science Institute doing this themselves? Well, it is costly. Carol Christian, deputy of the Community Missions Office at STSI said, “We can’t afford (to send) a huge number of disks to people.” Google can do it faster and cheaper.

Related Topics: Google: Partnerships

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