A breakthrough that might mean super fast internet for the public. M

Photonic switching beckons 100x Internet speeds

Terabit capacity photonic technology faster than electric circuits

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Techworld - Photonic switching beckons 100x Internet speeds

Photonic switching beckons 100x Internet speeds
Terabit capacity photonic technology faster than electric circuits
TechWorld
Rodney Gedda 09/07/2008 18:30:00

Techworld - Page not found

Researchers at the University of Sydney have developed technology that could boost the throughput of existing networks by 100-fold without costing the consumer any more, and its all thanks to a scratch on a piece of glass.

After four years of development, University of Sydney scientists say the Internet is set to become on average 60 times faster than existing networks.

According to the Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) at the University's School of Physics, the scratch will mean almost instantaneous, error-free and unlimited access to the Internet anywhere in the world.

CUDOS director, professor Ben Eggleton, said the discovery is a critical building block and a fundamental advance on what is already out there.

Eggleton said that up until now information has been moving at a slow rate, but optical fibres have a huge capacity to deliver more.

"The scratched glass we've developed is actually a photonic integrated circuit," Eggleton said.

"This circuit uses the 'scratch' as a guide or a switching path for information - like when trains are switched from one track to another - except this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks. This means that in one second the switch is turning on and off about one million times. We are talking about photonic technology that has terabit per second capacity."

An initial demonstration proved it possible to achieve speeds 60 times faster than existing local networks.

Okay, so scientists at the University of Sydney have discovered this. Well done to them, it sounds very promising. Now all we have to do is get it in a form that works for us. Knowing the business bureaucracy in my country...don't hold your breath

Why? This page loaded in 1/2 a second, what good is it for it to go in 1/200 of a second?

We already have internet conections that can download a movie over a commercial break (in less than 30 seconds), are people really going to cough up more money to save 29.7 seconds?

I can see it's use in the military or business sectors, but not in the private.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Broadband is very slow here, mainly due to a combination of crappy infrastructure and the actions of the main telco which owns most of that infrastructure and competes with providers who pay to use its infrastructure (although the competitors are now organising their own backbones and big pipes under the ocean). So it would be useful for us.

I forgot to add, I don't know of any plan here that has unlimited downloads either.

??? What connection exists that allows you to download a movie over a commercial break? Or are you talking about YouTube "movies" and it buffering in 30 seconds?

A connection speed this fast would allow us to move massive amounts of information very quickly. Sadly it will not see the light of day for many more years. We would have to do a complete re-design on our infrastructure. And hardware engineers are going to have to figure out how to make an interface for your machine to talk to this new "uber" pipe. This is sorta along the lines of quantum computing. It sounds great and they are getting some work done but we are a long ways off.

DSL seems like enough speed. However, it sounds like something that would not increase the price of your computer, so why not.

Internet browsing is not the only thing.

It would greatly increase the speed of downloads. It would be a huge breakthrough for mmo games. We could certainly use more improvement in speed. It probably won't do much for those that just check there e-mail, but in other areas it will be a great advancement.

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May your paradise always be green, you liberties always be full, and may the ignorance of you enemies not drive you to be pro-nuke.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself
into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and
trying to lift himself up by the handle."-Winston Churchill

So, just a question, what is your broadband speed? And is the 60X average compared to what Austrailians have (of which you said is pretty slow), or with the world average?

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Current Optical Carriers can have speeds of almost 40 Gbit/s (or downloading speeds of nearly 5 GB/s), of course these (due to prices) are mostly used by companies that need to hork together 10,000 computers for their employees. For a more individual level, you can get Fiber Optics that are over 50 Mbit/s and have downloading speeds of 6.25 MBps (download a 600 MB full movie in a little over a minute and a half).

However, Japan is well past double that speed in most areas.


Speed Matters: High-Speed Internet for All

"In Japan, fiber networks delivering 100 mbps already pass more than 70 percent of the homes in large parts of the country."

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

A DS5 carrier only gets 400mb/s. So what connection do you know of that breaks 50Gig/s? You would have to have a repeater every 2 feet to pull that off.