The prospect of downloading a feature film in seconds came a step closer today after Japanese scientists announced they had achieved a new speed record for transferring data over the internet.

The record - which involved sending a stream of data over a 30,000km network, the equivalent of three quarters of the earth’s circumference - achieved a speed of 9.08 GB/s, about 1,000 times faster than current top of the range broadband connections.

At that speed, a full-length feature film of 1.5 GB would be downloaded in matter of seconds. Most household broadband connections would take more than 40 minutes to download a film.

The benefits were not likely to be felt by regular internet users any time soon, however, because the record was set using a custom-built fibre optic network, which enables speeds far greater than the copper cables through which most homes connect to the internet.

It also used a ‘next generation’ internet protocol called IPv6, which has several benefits over the current protocol, IPv4, but is yet to be widely rolled out.

The researchers led by a team at the University of Tokyo set the record in December last year over a network which stretched from Tokyo to Chicago, on to Amsterdam, and then back to Tokyo via Seattle, a distance of 32, 372km.

For a period 20 minutes on a night they knew net traffic would be at a low - New Year's Eve - they streamed data at a speed of 9.08 GB/s, surpassing the previous record of 8.8 GB/s, which was set in February last year.

Dr Kei Hiraki, professor of computing science at the University of Tokyo who led the research, said: "These records are final for the 10GB/s network era because they represent more than 98% of the upper limit of network capacity.”

The increased speed had resulted from "several technical improvements," Dr Hiraki said, including more precise "pacing" of data and better "buffering capability," which resulted in less "packet loss."

The 'path' used for the record was custom-built fibre optic network used by universities and government agencies for research purposes.

A spokeswoman for internet2, a US-based consortium which helped develop the network, said that it was currently in the process of being upgraded to allow speeds of 100GB, which would allow films to be downloaded in fractions of a second.

"In order to deliver those kinds of speeds to consumers, however, you're talking about a significant investment in the existing infrastructure, and that's something that has to come from the network providers," the spokeswoman said.

Dr Hiraki said that he expected to achieve speeds of 40GB within 2 years, and 100GB in 6 years.

Asked whether he was already working on the next record attempt, he said: "Of course. But the method is still confidential."

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