NASA's Shadow network boasts an internet connection speed of 91 gigabits per second, making it roughly 13,000 times faster than the average American home connection.

A closer look

NASA's Shadow network boasts an internet connection speed of 91 gigabits per second, making it roughly 13,000 times faster than the average American home connection. This incredibly exclusive institutional network is used to instantly transmit massive datasets across the globe, allowing scientists to model climate change, track cosmic anomalies, and solve the mysteries of the universe. Meanwhile, you are paying a local monopoly a hundred bucks a month for a connection that drops every time it rains or someone turns on a microwave. It is slightly infuriating to know that while you are furiously refreshing a frozen Zoom screen during a meeting that could have been an email, some researcher in Maryland could technically download the entire Lord of the Rings extended edition in a fraction of a millisecond. At least they are using it to explore the cosmos instead of arguing with strangers on Reddit