All that juice comes at the price of redundant network links, though -- which means the whole thing got taken offline last night when a homeless man threw a cigarette onto a mattress under Boston's Longfellow Bridge, starting a blaze that eventually melted the fiber-optic link between Boston and New York.

ENGADGET: Smoking kills Internet2

Teams worked from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. over the past few months to install the fiber optic network, choosing late night hours in order to have minimal impact on bridge traffic.

CNN: San Francisco turns a bridge into art with 25,000 lights