Stanford students can now speed on the information highway thanks to researchers in computer science and electrical engineering who have developed the first wireless radios that can simultaneously send and receive signals, making these devices twice as fast as already existing ones.

“Textbooks say you can’t do it,” said Philip Levis, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, in a press release Monday. “The new system completely reworks our assumptions about how wireless networks can be designed.”

Although radios know exactly what they transmit, these messages are often much louder than ones from surrounding devices. As a result, each has to take turns in “talking” in order to be heard by the other. But the new devices work in very much the same way as the brain, filtering out its own sounds in order to better “hear” the other radios.

These machines, built by three electrical engineering graduate students—Jung Il Choi, Mayank Jain and Kannan Srinivasan—took several months to construct.

The team, which also includes Sachin Katti, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is currently working to commercialize their product by increasing both the strength of the transmissions and the distance they are able to travel.

Such improvements will make the technology more useful for Wi-Fi networks.