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."
Re:Will we notice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:already have this at home (Score:3, Interesting)
10( years)
12 (months)
365.25 (days)
24 (hours)
60 (minutes)
60 (seconds)
------------
29731345.93 (bits per second)
29034.52 (kilobits per second)
28.35 (megabits per second)
This new line transfers the equivalent of one decade of fully-saturated domestic ADSL2 line (24Mb) traffic every second.
Re:second.kilometer (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that optical fibre capacity is limited by dispersion (different parts of the signal travelling at different speeds, causing adjacent symbols to overlap), it's a reasonable number - both a longer distance and a faster symbol rate make the problem worse. So if this is what's limiting you, you can double the distance by halving the speed, or vice versa. Of course, that's not the only limiting factor, and IIRC some forms of dispersion don't scale proportionally with distance, so it's not the only relevant factor.
Re:second.kilometer (Score:2, Interesting)