Next month the University of Twente will launch its latest flagship project: the construction of the world's fastest Internet connection.

It will be available for all staff and resident students, with a speed of up to 1 gigabit per second. The only known civilian rival is at the Google campus in Stanford.

The network was constructed by the University IT department and Students Net Twente, a student association. The University has history of breaking Internet boundaries: it built (at the time) the Netherlands' fastest Internet connection 10 years ago, with a 100 megabit connection.

According to the President of Students Net Twente, Robert Dahmen, the new super-fast connection offers real-time benefits: "Back in the early days, you used to have to wait three minutes for a YouTube video to start playing, even now it still takes a few seconds, but with a gigabit network the video starts playing immediately. Even boring things like Windows updates are significantly faster."

University of Twente, 3D-animation

The campus uses a fibre optic loop system to link all its site facilities. Copper wires connect these nodes to the university buildings and student flats.

A word of caution though for Twente students: there will still be a limit of 50GB a week usage to limit abuse of the system.