Gobsmacking Fibre-Optic Speed

[Slim]

https://www.aston.ac.uk/latest-news/aston-university-researchers-send-data-45-million-times-faster-average-broadband

Aston University researchers have sent data at a speed that is 4.5 million times faster than the average home broadband.

The rate is the fastest ever sent by opening up specific new wavelength bands that are not yet used in fibre optic systems.

As part of an international collaboration, the academics transferred data at a rate of 301 terabits or 301,000,000 megabits per second, using a single, standard optical fibre.

.. so in a sense that would be 37.625 terabytes of stuff going down the wire every second, but - not all of that would be "payload" or actual transferred data, some of it is protocol overheads. Another consideration is the speed of the hardware attached to the network, I have to wonder how much data they sent across. Even the fastest regular commercial computer memory has data rates measured in GB (not TB) per second. You certainly can't transfer information to a storage device at even a tiny fraction of that speed on a conventional computer.

I also wonder what the length of the fibre cable was; one end of a lab to another probably.

Even so - absolutely staggering.

[The Picnic Wasp]

I wonder who is privy to this international collaboration. Trusted friendly nations I hope.

[David L]

I wonder who is privy to this international collaboration. Trusted friendly nations I hope.

Regardless, China will end up making all the stuff that involves this.....and then we'll buy it