The Flash would be proud.
Yesterday the world's longest distance network connection was demonstrated in Queenstown - travelling from the Rydges Hotel in the resort to California and back in half a second.
The 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) research network, across the Pacific Ocean via the Southern Cross cable, is 4000 times faster than residential broadband and 1000 times faster than ultra-fast broadband.
It was deployed by Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand (Reannz) in collaboration with consortium partners.
The connection was demonstrated yesterday at the Global Lambda Integrated Facility Conference 2014, attended by the world's leading high-performance network engineers.
The live-streaming demonstration comprised a consultation between a patient in the United States and two doctors - one in Queenstown and the other elsewhere in the US.
Reannz chief executive Steve Cotter said the network, spanning about 20,500km, gave an insight into future capacity for New Zealand's research and education community, ensuring it could participate globally in ''an increasingly borderless and data-intensive world''.
The network would be used for a range of world-first, real-time, data-intensive demonstrations during next week's conference, showcasing what the connection could do and what it meant for New Zealand, Mr Cotter said.
''Ultimately, Reannz wants to eliminate the tyranny of distance for our research and education communities, which will help them to be as competitive internationally as possible.''
Queenstown Lakes Mayor Vanessa van Uden, who opened the conference yesterday, said it was ''awesome'' that cutting-edge technology was able to be showcased and demonstrated in Queenstown.
''It just goes to show what you can achieve with some innovative thinking.''
