In cooperation with Altibox, The Gathering, have set an extreme goal: to have the universe fastest Internet access.

After last year’s world record of 110Gbit/s, the Swedes at Dreamhack answered with 120 Gbit/s on their event. Just like cross-country skier Northug answers the Swedes before the finish line, TG and Altibox answers the Swedish record with a new world record.

“We have a long tradition of breaking records. With this internet access we write history again”, says head of information at The Gathering, Simon Eriksen Valvik.

“No way we would let the Swedes keep the lead on this, and we didn’t just raise the bar a little, we moved it a story up, continues Valvik Eriksen.

More than Thailand

To comparison a country like Thailand with about 60 million inhabitants have about 158Gbit/s international bandwidth.

The speed is incomprehensibly large. But if we say that a song on iTunes is 5 MB, we can download a total of 5120 songs per second. Every song that’s downloaded on iTunes per month can be downloaded in about half an hour at The Gathering.

Altibox, Norway’s premier provider of services through fiber delivers this year’s Internet access.

Fiber is the key

“This year surpasses every previous record. This is just the reason we’re focusing on broadband trough fiber. It has nearly no limits and we know that we will be setting new records in the future too”, says Per-Andre Rykhus, vice president, marketing, sales & products, Altibox.

“We bring with us Huawei and their technicians and Level 3 which delivers the foreign Internet capacity needed for such enormous speeds. Day to day, there’s simply not enough capacity in Norway to handle speeds like this”, adds Rykhus.

A world-class core network

2012 marks the 14th year in a row the core network in Vikingskipet is delivered by Cisco. This means the participants will experience a world class, secure network.

“Cisco once again supports The Gathering as it in turn increases the skills and innovation of the youth. The entire Norwegian society is dependent on highly qualified personnel with IT skill and especially the network’s contribution to innovation, creativity and new thinking in the years ahead. These young enthusiasts can be worth their weight in gold for Norway in the long term”, says Jørgen Myrland, CEO of Cisco Norway.