Irish Gov't Invests In Color-Coded Fiber Optics 129
c0mpliant writes "The Irish government has invested a further €5 million, after already having invested €5 million one year ago, in a new system of fiber optics which heralds an era of virtualization of fiber networks, using color coding to enable multiple fiber providers to serve businesses and homes, often on a single strand of fiber. The technology, which has already sparked interest from companies such as BT and IBM, is already in its first phase and boasts an impressive 2.5 terabytes capacity, double the capacity of the London phone system. The company behind the technology, Intune Technology, is comprised of a group of ex-UCD photonics researchers and has been around since 1999 and are based in Dublin. The project is set to be completed by 2020."
About time (Score:3, Interesting)
It really is about time the irish government invested in improving connectivity. we are so far behind the average we may aswell be hand delivering packets.
Maybe now i can get an affordable internet connection.
Re:DWDM (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem I see with this is the fact that certain wavelengths have certain interfering effects with other wavelengths. For example, 660-670nm radiation coupled with 720-740nm IR radiation causes some odd effects, which plants happen to utilize in photosynthesis, but I don't think we've ever tested such effects against the communication of data.
So, when do we get color coded streets ? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is something I've been pondering for a while, why don't we have color coded streets in our biggest cities so that navigation would be easier for us Human Beings ? Human Beings understand colors and places, and can put those two together in their little memories (brains they call them) and can use that information to easily assosiate things with other things, thus remembering for example that Main Street is blue and takes me to the Green Zone, and throught that I have to take the pink road, turn left and then follow the yellow lines, and boom, I'm at the Market Zone.
Human Beings are so simple. I wish our Systems were too.
Re:Terminology (Score:3, Interesting)
FDM, really? Wouldn't you be using CWDM or DWDM (Course/Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) be the right choice with fiber?
Frequency-division multiplexing and wavelength-division multiplexing are the same thing, given that wavelength = speed / frequency.
Re:2.5 terabytes capacity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming those 3 loops in the picture are 300 km per east-west leg (the max width of Ireland is 280km) including the north-south parts of the loop, the total fiber length is 6 * 300km = 1800km = 1800000m. The speed of light in fiber is approximately 200e6 m/s vs. 300e6 m/s for a vacuum. That makes the total fiber 'length' about 9ms. At 2.5 TB/s, all of the fiber only contains about 22.5GB at any one instant.
Re:Powerpoint with details (Score:3, Interesting)