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Technology

'Poor man's broadband' has a turn of speed

By Tom Simonite

14 November 2007

It’s not often that you get to go faster by avoiding the superhighway, but soon students in Pakistan will be able to download big files faster by avoiding the internet.

Instead of using expensive broadband or slow, unreliable dial-up connections, students at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) will try out a new system, dubbed “poor man’s broadband” (PMB). It allows computers to link to each other directly for faster downloads, and it works as long as at least one computer running the trial software has already downloaded the desired file from the internet. The system should also reduce the…

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