The recent Supercomputing 2006 Bandwidth Challenge set a record for sustained data transfer. This is in anticipation of the huge amount of data that will be coming out of the LHC once it is operational. Such huge data will also be distributed to many parts of the world and certainly presents a significant computing and network challenge.
I think a lot of people do not realize how much of the technological advancement in computing/networking, especially high-speed networking, have been driven by the needs that came out of physics. Forget about the invention of the World Wide Web at CERN (which many people still don't realize). The need to handle such large amount of data, and to be able to transfer it efficiently to all over the world, have driven many improvement and advances in computing that are now being used in places such as stock exchanges.
There are many things that people see as a direct outcome of scientific research, but there are also many things they take for granted that they do not realize that also came as the byproduct of scientific research. This is one such example.
Zz.
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