100-Petabit Internet Backbone Coming Into View 137
lostinbrave notes laboratory work that could lead to long-haul network cables capable of exceeding 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. "Alcatel-Lucent said that scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables, resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer, or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago. ... The transmissions were not just faster, they were accomplished over a network whose repeaters are 20 percent farther apart than commonly maintained in such networks, which could decrease the costs of deploying such a network."
second.kilometer (Score:5, Informative)
From the PC World article:
The measurement takes into account both speed and the ability to maintain it over distance, by multiplying the network's speed by its distance in kilometers. In this case, a network with an aggregate speed of 15.5T bits per second (Tbps) was able to maintain that speed over a distance of 7,000 kilometers (4,349 miles), or roughly the distance from Paris to Chicago
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:second.kilometer? (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. Decoherence/absorption/dispersion happens. Packets get dropped.
Re:Who cares, solve the last mile already. (Score:2, Informative)
I know in my area in PA, we have the same options you list above. The only one missing is the Fibre-to-the-home... but that can be had in the Pittsburgh, PA area via Verizon's FIOS. I know here in the middle of PA with comcast's cable modem I get around 14Mbits/sec down and about 3Mbit/sec up.
Re:Conversions? (Score:4, Informative)
I had to substitute 1 LoC for 10 terabyte myself, but according to google 100Pb/s*km = 2863278 LoC*mph. So if you give everyone in Chicago a copy of the library of congress and they drive around at 1 mph, it'll have the same bandwidth. Simple, right?
Re:second.kilometer (Score:3, Informative)
At the very least I assume we can agree that "100-Petabit Internet Backbone" is a gross misrepresentation of what the press release describes. "15.5 Tbit long haul" would have been accurate.
Re:and yet (Score:3, Informative)
All these advances in speed and yet consumer ISPs can't seem to offer more than 6Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up for less than $70 a month.
Thats because we don't have real competition in the US, so why should they give you more for less?
Compare this to Germany for example, were you can get 16 Mbps for as little as 15 euros/month, 50 Mbps is available and Kabel Deutschland just announced that they are going to start selling 100 Mbps starting next year [teltarif.de]. Amazing what competition will do.