Posted on 06/03/2022 9:01:17 AM PDT by American Number 181269513
Although high-speed wireless technologies like Wifi 6E and 5G dominate news headlines, analog, and optical cables are still the backbone of the internet, and for good reason. Researchers in Japan just set a new fiber optic data transmission record with a technique that’s compatible with existing cable infrastructure, meaning a real-world implementation is entirely possible, and not just limited to a laboratory setting.
Researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) successfully sent data down a custom multi-core fiber optic cable at a speed of 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 51.7 km. That’s the equivalent of sending 127,500 GB of data every second, which, according to the researchers, is also enough capacity for over “10 million channels of 8K broadcasting per second.” As New Atlas points out, that’s also 100,000 times faster than the promised next generation of high-speed gigabit connections providing internet to home users.
lthough high-speed wireless technologies like Wifi 6E and 5G dominate news headlines, analog, and optical cables are still the backbone of the internet, and for good reason. Researchers in Japan just set a new fiber optic data transmission record with a technique that’s compatible with existing cable infrastructure, meaning a real-world implementation is entirely possible, and not just limited to a laboratory setting.
Researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) successfully sent data down a custom multi-core fiber optic cable at a speed of 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 51.7 km. That’s the equivalent of sending 127,500 GB of data every second, which, according to the researchers, is also enough capacity for over “10 million channels of 8K broadcasting per second.” As New Atlas points out, that’s also 100,000 times faster than the promised next generation of high-speed gigabit connections providing internet to home users.
In this experiment, by broadening the Raman amplification bandwidth to the full S-band and using customized thulium-doped fiber amplifiers (TDFAs) for S-band and extended L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), we were able to use a record 20 THz optical spectrum with total of 801 x 25 GHz spaced wavelength channels, each with dual-polarization-256 QAM modulation for high spectral density in all wavelength bands.
The most important part is that this second breakthrough relies on hardware and techniques that are completely compatible with conventional transceiver hardware that is already in place across the country. New fiber optic cabling will need to be installed, but since the researchers limited the size of their multi-core cable to standard dimensions, it would be completely compatible with existing infrastructure, greatly reducing upgrade costs. As 5G becomes more widespread, and with 6G just around the corner, the country’s demand for data is going to continue to increase by leaps and bounds, but an innovation like this promises to give internet providers a sizeable head start for at least a few years.
The Beast gainith strength.
Good for them! Japan’s still in the game.
That’s a lot of porn.
Very helpful data speeds for posting two paragraphs twice
That’s great, but the limitation nowadays is mostly at the server level. Even the massive number of servers Amazon Web Services operates can’t keep up at times.
The 1970s "old joke" referred to above was told to this poster in the NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab cafeteria in about 1975-1976. He worked in the Digital Maintenance group in the JPL Space Flight Operations Center from 1974 to 1978.
The story / joke was a classic regularly used at JPL to explain ping time, and differentiate bandwidth from latency (and, by the way, the need to document where your cables ran, and that you needed to distribute your data circuits across multiple cables in different trenches - or somehow via multiple paths).
The NASA Deep Space Network tracking station at Goldstone is just outside of Fort Irwin, just east of Barstow, California. When you leave the highway you have to go through Fort Irwin to get to any of the Goldstone facilities. Depending on the highway route taken, and which Deep Space Network dish at Goldstone you are driving to (or starting from) it was about 160-185 miles (255-298 km) from JPL. At freeway speeds (65 mph, about 100 km/h) it was a minimum of three-and-a-half hours, usually four, and frequently more, depending on the traffic. If you ignored the speed limit while out in the desert (risky) you could get closer to three and-a-half hours. This distance and speed also explained how the "ping time" was 7 to 8 hours. Several of the freeways now in existence were not there then.
At the time (early 1970s), the data links from JPL to Goldstone ranged from as low as 1200 and 2400 bps (several of each) to 9600 bps (one or two). The 9-track magnetic tapes of the day recorded at a maximum density of 6250 bits per inch (but some older drives were limited to 800 or 1600 bits per inch). The tape reels were made in different sizes, the largest held about 2400 feet of tape, but due to the data being written in records, with gaps between the records, the maximum data capacity of a 2400 foot reel, blocked at 32,767 bytes per record and recorded at 6250 BPI was 170 megabytes per reel.
As the story that your contributor heard went, one day a plumbing contractor's backhoe dug up and broke the underground cable that carried ALL of the JPL-to-Goldstone data and voice lines through Fort Irwin, and it would take at least a day, maybe longer, to repair. So someone was designated to drive two boxes of 12 reels each of magnetic tape down to JPL, and quickly. The first available vehicle was a white NASA station wagon. Hence the punch line: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes hurtling down the highway".
Rounding off the numbers, twenty-four reels of tape at 170 megabytes each is 4080 megabytes. Three and a half hours is 210 minutes. 4080 megabytes divided by 210 works out to about 19.4 megabytes per minute, or 32.3 kilobytes per second (258.4kilobits per second) - over 100 times faster than a 2400 bps data circuit of the time. Note that the incident above involved only 24 reels - which didn't come anywhere near filling the station wagon, in fact the two boxes of tapes didn't even fill the front passenger seat. (as an aside, a station wagon is known as an estate car or estate in other parts of the world). Incidentally, that conversation was the first time your contributor ever heard the term backhoe fade used to describe accidental massive damage to an underground cable (compare it to the term rain fade used to describe a fade-out of a point-to-point microwave radio path due to the absorptive effect of water in the air).
You can store it all on a thin wafer the size of your fingernail.
If you wanted to.
Google/ NSA are smiling.
Incredible. I remember in the 90’s having a 56Kbps modem and needing to download a MS Windows update that was 65MB. It took about 24 hrs....after failing 12hrs in on the first attempt.
Now I can pull down GB’s in minutes. My first Hard Disk was 40MB, which is now just a single phone app - which downloads and installs in seconds.
What ever happened to that 3d cube crystal ,I think they said was about and inch square, (about 15 years ago) that they said would be able to store several DVDs worth of data?
Splicing a single fiber containing four cores should be interesting.
“You can store it all on a thin wafer the size of your fingernail.”
And possibly implanted in your brain?
“Splicing a single fiber containing four cores should be interesting.”
A single cable has one core. Special connectors are used to ‘splice’ cables.
Yeah...me too. How happy were you when you got your first 19.2 modem? I was a happy dude.
The cubes were supposed to replace hard drives.. but I guess the SSDs would outdo that too.
Haha - my first was 2400 baud...just awful, even for the things you wanted back then which were tiny files. I forget how many I’ve had but remember initially thinking the 56Kbps was screamin’ fast! :)
As long as our insane copyright laws aren't extended yet again to protect the rat.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.