Sunday, October 23rd 2022
Internet Data Transmission Record Shattered by Danish Researchers
Transmitting data over the internet is something that just happens for most of us, but the infrastructure that's powering the internet is full of bottlenecks and researchers around the world are testing new ways of being able to transmit more data using already installed fibre. A team of researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has managed to break the data transmission record by quite some margin, using something called a frequency comb, which is a photonics chip. The team of researchers hit a data transmission speed of an insane 1.84 Petabits per second over a distance of 7.9 kilometres—or 4.9 miles if you like—using standard fibre optic lines.
This equates to more than the total volume of global internet traffic that's being sent every second, according to DTU. Although the distance is far from the longest, as a team of Japanese researchers have managed to transmit a 319 Terrabit per second datastream over a distance of 3,001 km (1,864 miles), although they used signal amplifiers every 70 km to reach this distance. The DTU team's frequency comb was made by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and it breaks down the infrared laser that's being used to transmit the data, into a rainbow spectrum, where each colour corresponds to a frequency equivalent. This allows multiple streams of data to be encoded with data, before being re-integrated and sent as a single infrared laser signal over the fibre. According to DTU, without the frequency comb, they would've needed more than a thousand lasers to achieve the same speeds using state-of-the-art commercial equipment. The team at DTU expects to be able to hit speeds of up to 100 Petabit per second in the future.
Sources:
Technical University of Denmark, via The Register
This equates to more than the total volume of global internet traffic that's being sent every second, according to DTU. Although the distance is far from the longest, as a team of Japanese researchers have managed to transmit a 319 Terrabit per second datastream over a distance of 3,001 km (1,864 miles), although they used signal amplifiers every 70 km to reach this distance. The DTU team's frequency comb was made by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and it breaks down the infrared laser that's being used to transmit the data, into a rainbow spectrum, where each colour corresponds to a frequency equivalent. This allows multiple streams of data to be encoded with data, before being re-integrated and sent as a single infrared laser signal over the fibre. According to DTU, without the frequency comb, they would've needed more than a thousand lasers to achieve the same speeds using state-of-the-art commercial equipment. The team at DTU expects to be able to hit speeds of up to 100 Petabit per second in the future.
40 Comments on Internet Data Transmission Record Shattered by Danish Researchers
USB2.0 speeds can reach 480Mbps at L1 but baud rate drops to ~20MB/s in sustained transfers due to overhead. And 1Gbps link can get you 20MB/s with no sweat at all.Insane ones! Especially if you want switching at wire speeds. Just imagine this - even latest $1000 CPU can only get around 50-60Gbps of RAM bandwidth, and only from insanely tuned (and just as expensive) RAM sticks.
And now imagine if you have to switch 100 ports of 100Gbps each! Puts things into perspective, no?
My phone has a 6gb data cap but offers unlimited plans as well. I don't need that so I'm not going to pay for it and I don't use all my data so it keeps rolling over till I have a massive pool of it.
By using only one chip, they can pack more in the same space and (just maybe) make it cheaper.
I remember the times when HDDs were too slow for a 1Gbit fiber connection.
Todays SSDs NVMe are around 5000MBs (some less, some more), so you would need a 40Gbit fiber connection to hit their speed.
Folks that have 10Gbits connections are already bottlenecked by SATA SSDs or the ones that are around 1000Mbs.
Imagine your download speed is faster than your SSD. Funny times.
Of course, companies are already using speeds past 100Gbit (and several of them), especially to connect to their data centers.
No word about energy per bit transmitted but it must have been record low.
Protocols restructuring, and we can not escape that!!!