100-Petabit Internet Backbone Coming Into View

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."

Who cares, solve the last mile already.

[grumpygrodyguy]

I would trade this in a second for a guarantee that the last mile problem will be resolved in my lifetime.

It's been 10 years and I'm still stuck with a crappy 1.5m/256k (1.2/180 actual) ADSL line.

Will we notice?

[maggotsforbreakfast]

Does anyone know what percentage of our current trans-atlantic bandwidth we are using? The full article says that we currently have 10 Petabits/s*k, so this would be about a 10x increase. Thats a lot, but less then I thought.

Re:Too bad

[thesandtiger]

I agree - the fraction I'd be happy with would be 9/10ths. Totally reasonable!

Being serious, this is only indirectly for end users, and people bitching about slow connections here would be like me bitching in a NASA thread about how it isn't fair that NASA has crafts going 20,000 MPH while my bicycle is still stuck at a max of about 30mph. Different toys for different uses. This is clearly an infrastructure tool, one that offers much better speeds and lower costs of deployment than the current stuff.

That said, I'd really be happy if I could just get FIOS where I live. It is absurd to me that, living in downtown Chicago, I can't get anything better than Comcast cable.

Re:Too bad

[Spazztastic]

I don't see anything OT about this thread, but apparently since it doesn't have to do with the theory of deploying 100Petabit fiber, it has to be OT. It's not like I'm throwing in a hot grits Natalie Portmen comment. Mod me down more, I have plenty karma to burn while you groupthink mods waste your points.

Re:second.kilometer

[Megane]

What I want to know is how many bits there are in the first.kilometer and the third.kilometer.

Re:second.kilometer

[jgs]

Maybe old hat to you network engineers, but I was previously unfamiliar with "bits per second.kilometer".

Thanks for the info. No, this is not old hat to network engineers. I've never heard of it and I've been working in the industry for more years than I care to admit. I think it might be old hat to marketing people though, since it appears to be a classic BIG MARKETING NUMBER. Normal networking people would call 15.5 Tbps * 7000 km... 15.5 Tbps.

Maybe it's true that optics geeks really do use numbers this way, I dunno. But the fact it comes from an AlcaLu press release doesn't lend it a whole lot of credibility.

I am massively unimpressed by the headline on the Slashdot story. Maybe another article headlined "kdawson swallows inflated AlcaLu marketing fluff hook, line and sinker" would be in order?

Re:second.kilometer

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is a unit that sounds really big but really isn't all that useful? I would much rather have the bandwidth between point A and point B, not the bandwidth plus the distance of the cable between the points.

I mean, I could say the longest cable in my house are carrying signals with 105 (Gb/sec)(ft) just because I have 105 foot cable between 2 Ethernet switches running at 1Gb/s? ( (1Gb/sec)*(105 feet))

Or would a better way of saying is that normal Cat6 1Gb/s Ethernet with a 100 meter distance limitation runs at 100 Gb/(s*meter)? (Or in feet, about (333Gb/sec)*(ft) ) (It is 100m right? Or am I thinking 100Mb/sec?)

Also, the use of "." in the statements in the article slightly confuses me because I would want to read "bits per second.kilometer" as "b/(s*km)" when it should be read as "(b*km)/s"

Re:second.kilometer

[jgs]

Yes, the story headline is talking about something totally different. I mean, how do YOU read "100-Petabit Internet Backbone"? Most people would not interpret it to mean "15.5 Tbps delivered over 7000 km." (The headline error is repeated in TFA. Ironically if you click all the way through to the AlcaLu press release [alcatel-lucent.com] the headline is more accurate: "Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs announces new optical transmission record and breaks 100 Petabit per second kilometer barrier".)

I will grant you that optics geeks may find the bandwidth-distance metric familiar... but I continue to assert that [Inter]net geeks do not.