A group of Russian scientists, in partnership with an American university, have created an algorithm that can increase internet speeds by one-and-a-half times, but in practice it means data transmission speeds can be increased by up to 50 percent. Regardless if the connection is over ethernet connection or Wi-Fi, thanks to the “superior constrained shortest path finder algorithm” connecting to powerful data processing centers is now possible regardless of where you are in the world.

Scientists at Samara University in Russia, in conjunction with the University of Missouri, have found the algorithm to work in tests, but that it is only successful when the environment was just right, from bandwidth signal and data transmission speed to cloud service price and storage.

Co-author of the paper Andrey Sukhov said it was the need to collaborate with the European Center for Nuclear Research (Cern) that spearheaded the breakthrough: “Scientists calculate tasks in the laboratories scattered all over the world, make inquiries to the computer centers of the Cern. They also need to exchange both textual information and high-resolution streaming video online. The technology that we offer will help them with this.”

Experts based in Russia can now participate in global projects developed by, and for the scientific community. It also means scientists don’t have to build or relocate powerful supercomputers when they’re testing out a new idea. They can simply jump online and work out high-precision calculations from the confines of their own lab.

What this means outside of the university environment is still unclear. As we live more and more of our lives in the cloud, that constant stream of data will need to speed up at some point. It’s an issue for any new tech based on a seamless stream of data to and from the cloud. Ideally, driverless cars should constantly zip information back and forth from a supercomputer to calculate split-second decisions, but that’s just not possible given the current state of connectivity.

For the average user, it won’t mean much. The conditions have to be just-so and in reality, that’s too difficult to ensure. But for institutions that need access to some of the world’s fastest internet speeds, labs will no longer have to live and die by the state of their facilities.