AT&T Takes On Formula One

Since it’s Friday, let’s cover some hybrid telecom/racing news for once.  Forgetting the TMobileUSA dea for now, AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) won something that will surely finish a bit quicker.  They have won a WAN acceleration contract with the Formula One team Williams F1.  I’ve never really managed to ponder bandwith and formula one racing in a contiguous thought before, but I suppose they do need their data and fast.

Williams F1 generates about 35Gbp in data per race from 140 sensors on the car measuring stuff like temperature, pressure, speed, wheel position and loading.  Not only is that a lot of data, it has gone up 50% since 2010 and will probably do so again next year.  There is also a limit to the number of personnel the team can have at the race itself so it all must be transferred to the teams offsite headquarters.  Quickly too, so that the engineers there can analyze it, make decisions based on it, and get that back to the race team.

That data moves over AT&T’s VPN service, and with the WAN acceleration manages Williams F1’s transfers up to 25 times as fast.  Now, if only they had 100G…

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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Internet Backbones