Modern day broadband internet that uses fiber optics has managed to reach extremely high speeds, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, the upper limit has not quite been reached yet. It turns out that a team of researchers working out of Aston University have just transferred data at a rate that’s 4.5 million times faster than the average broadband speed you might be using in the comfort of your very own home.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that this international research collaboration managed to reach a data transfer speed of 301 terabits per second. Just for context, that’s around 310 million megabits per second, and they didn’t need any fancy equipment to get the job done either. Rather, they relied on a standard optical fiber, with the only difference being that they tapped into a new wavelength that isn’t used very often at this current point in time.
This research was a collaborative effort between scientists at the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies as well as researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology over in Japan. People working at Nokia Bell Labs in the US were also involved with all things having been considered and taken into account.
Such speeds may very well end up becoming useful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up meeting the rising demand for data transfer. It bears mentioning that normal copper cables aren’t able to attain speeds that are nearly as close as what the researchers used. These strands of glass that make up optical fibers have the potential to make the internet far faster than might have been the case otherwise.
Optical amplifiers as well as gain equalizers were utilized for the purposes of accessing these previously untouched wavelengths. More research will need to be done in order to ascertain the long term viability as well as commercial scalability of such a project, but this is definitely a positive step in the right direction.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that this international research collaboration managed to reach a data transfer speed of 301 terabits per second. Just for context, that’s around 310 million megabits per second, and they didn’t need any fancy equipment to get the job done either. Rather, they relied on a standard optical fiber, with the only difference being that they tapped into a new wavelength that isn’t used very often at this current point in time.
This research was a collaborative effort between scientists at the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies as well as researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology over in Japan. People working at Nokia Bell Labs in the US were also involved with all things having been considered and taken into account.
Such speeds may very well end up becoming useful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up meeting the rising demand for data transfer. It bears mentioning that normal copper cables aren’t able to attain speeds that are nearly as close as what the researchers used. These strands of glass that make up optical fibers have the potential to make the internet far faster than might have been the case otherwise.
Optical amplifiers as well as gain equalizers were utilized for the purposes of accessing these previously untouched wavelengths. More research will need to be done in order to ascertain the long term viability as well as commercial scalability of such a project, but this is definitely a positive step in the right direction.
Read next: Google Confirms Massive Increase In Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Exploited In Attacks Due To Spyware Vendors
