Japan Sets New Internet Speed Record, Surpassing Average US Broadband Speeds By 4 Million Times

A team of Japanese researchers has set a new world record for internet speed, transmitting data at 125,000 gigabytes per second over 1,120 miles using a new type of 19-core optical fiber. "That's about 4 million times the average internet speed in the U.S. and would allow you to download the entire Internet Archive in less than four minutes," notes Live Science. It's also "more than twice the previous world record of 50,250 Gbps, previously set by a different team of scientists in 2024." From the report: To achieve this new speed -- which has not been independently verified -- the team developed a new form of optical fiber to send information at groundbreaking speeds over roughly the distance between New York and Florida. Details about this achievement were presented April 3 at the 48th Optical Fiber Communication Conference in San Francisco, according to a statement from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

The new type of optical fiber is equivalent to 19 standard optical fibers in its data transmission capacity. The new optical fiber is better suited to long-haul transmission than existing cables because the centers of all 19 fibers interact with light in the same way, so they encounter less light fluctuation, which results in less data loss. The new cable squeezes 19 separate fibers into a diameter of five-thousandths of an inch (0.127 millimeters), which is the same thickness as most existing single-fiber cables already in use. This effort means the new cable can transmit more data using existing infrastructure. [...] For this demonstration, the data ran through a transmission system 21 times, finally reaching a data receiver after traveling the equivalent of 1,120 miles.

measurement lab or it didnt happen

[johnjones]

try this

https://speed.measurementlab.net/ [measurementlab.net]

Re:

[ls671]

and would allow you to download the entire Internet Archive in less than four minutes

Good point since you need a server to measure the bandwidth and I strongly doubt the "Internet Archive" has that capacity and that you would be the only downloading from the archive anyway. So, no it wouldn't allow you to download the entire Internet Archive in less than four minutes even if you sent it to /dev/null because I suspect even the Internet Archive doesn't have that writing speed in order to store the data so you most likely don't either.

Nerdgasm

[Fons_de_spons]

In the voice of doc Brown from back to the future... 125 TERABYTES? 125 TERABYTES? 125 terabytes... Great scott...

Compare

[markdavis]

What is the point of comparing a Japanese lab's exotic trunking speed to the USA's "average home" speeds?

Does Japan plan to install this exotic 19-core fiber into their homes? Of course not.

Re:Compare

[AmiMoJo]

Journalists think that laypeople need something to compare these numbers to, to have a sense of scale. Like Libraries of Congress or football fields or double decker busses.

Comparing Japan's domestic internet to other countries is interesting though. You haven't been able to order new DSL lines for years, it's fibre or nothing. The basic fibre service is 10Gbps, with many places offering 20 now. As well as internet, you can get 8k TV and POTS over it too.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

What about blah blah blah.

Re:

[MachineShedFred]

Found the guy who thinks the entire country is Shinjuku City.

Re:

[Captain Segfault]

I'm not sure what fantasyland Japan you're living in, but 10 gigabit fiber service is nowhere near as ubiquitous as you're saying. It certainly exists, but it isn't "the basic fibre service" -- it is a still somewhat limited area availability product, and unless something has changed in the past year or so it is a premium product that isn't the lowest tier of any provider.

Re:

[yagmot]

Maybe you've confused cellular data plans with internet speed? The basic fiber service is not 10Gbps. It's available, sure, and a few companies are advertising it, but the basic service plan for FLET's or Softbank Hikari or whatever is still 1Gbps. The only 20Gbps offering I can find is from Sony's NURO and it's limited to Minato-ku in Tokyo (where I happen to be writing this). https://www.nuro.jp/s_plan/20g... [www.nuro.jp]

Re:Compare

[mjwx]

What is the point of comparing a Japanese lab's exotic trunking speed to the USA's "average home" speeds?

Does Japan plan to install this exotic 19-core fiber into their homes? Of course not.

Would it be better if they compared the USs abysmal home internet speed to the home internet speed of rural Norway? In either case it's still not looking good.

It serves as a point of reference. Most people don't know how long 320 KM are but can visualise the distance between London and Manchester... especially those who have no idea about metric (pretty much just the US at this point).

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

Don't you want America to improve?

Re:

[OrangeTide]

Recognizing the need to improve is the first step. Next is America has to want to change.

Re:Compare

[timeOday]

It's to give an idea of how many homes could be served by 1 such cable. Not that you would run it to every home, you would have different fiber for the "last mile" (or 10). But that 1 run could serve an entire city (unless it was a real biggie). Or all the cities along a long stretch of freeway, etc.

Re:

[The-Ixian]

Yeah, everyone knows that American's prefer "Football fields" for their comparisons...

Re:

[larryjoe]

What is the point of comparing a Japanese lab's exotic trunking speed to the USA's "average home" speeds?

Does Japan plan to install this exotic 19-core fiber into their homes? Of course not.

Yes, it's misleading and ridiculous.

Here's something else misleading and ridiculous. Based on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], median US internet speeds are actually higher than in Japan, so comparing the Japanese lab's peak speeds to the average Japanese home speed is even more impressive.

The internet is for porn!

[devslash0]

I know that some people may get very desperate to have a 2-hour kinky Japanese porn right now but come on people, such speeds...

Silly article by live science

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing residential speed to speed set in a lab is misleading and silly. I can understand though, it probably would have killed them to just say what the bitrate was.
>would allow you to download the entire Internet Archive in less than four minutes,"
If the internet archive could even transmit that much data per second, which they can't
>the team developed a new form of optical fiber
The new 19-core fiber is newish, it was developed by this Japanese team and some Australian groups 2 years ago
>This e

Bytes, bits, who cares?

[Entrope]

transmitting data at 125,000 gigabytes per second [...] more than twice the previous world record of 50,250 Gbps

The data rate in this experiment was 1.02 petabits per second, so the first number is correct -- but almost 20 times what was given for the previous record. The previous record was actually a tad over 400 terabits per second, or 50,000 GBps if one insists on using more digits than needed.

Re:

[Zaraday]

But how fast is that in nibbles per jiffy?

Re:

[dohzer]

Can you translate that to symbols or chips per second? How about baud rate?

Re:

[Entrope]

I could if somebody told me the modulation and FEC schemes, but so far I haven't cared enough to see what the actual paper says about those. I suspect this isn't using DSSS or another scheme that has a substantially different chip rate than the coded bit rate.

Re:

[registrations_suck]

Down modded?

What do you people have against pixelated pussy?

quibble

[PuddleBoy]

"...125,000 gigabytes per second..."

"...50,250 Gbps..."

Try to be consistent between bits and bytes.

AI companies

[stabiesoft]

are going to be ordering these things by the dozens to speed up the slurping.

Apples to apples, please

[hyades1]

""That's about 4 million times the average internet speed in the U.S.

It might be more informative to compare the Japanese researchers' accomplishment with the average internet speed of South Korea, or Finland or Canada. Comparing them with a Third World country seems misleading.

4000000x the average US broadband speed?

[DesertNomad]

125000 GB/s = 1000000 Gbps
1000000 Gbps/4000000 = 0.25 Gbps average speed.
Is the average US broadband speed really 250 Mbps?
I did just check mine via measurementtestlab.net and got about 350 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up. But I'm in a major city with beaucoup resources.

Re:

[Guignol]

This was a flame-bait article (or summary) meant to attract bad library of congress jokes, metric impairment jokes, I don't understand binary jokes, and more importantly, racist jokes. (I mean.. I hope ???)
But there you had to ruin the fun for everyone, why are you even checking, calculating anything ?
I'll have to submit a story now in the lines of:
"New blue whale found with a record 4.5m long penis, or about FIFTY TIMES your average American white male penis length ZOMG !!!!"
just to see if somehow you

National record for biggest deuce

[backslashdot]

I dropped the world's biggest deuce -- a new national and international record -- in the lab today. Does it mean anything? No. Nobody can benefit from it. It was in a lab. It wasn't a field deployable deuce. It required eating a special blend of day-old bean burrito and last night's leftover chicken vindaloo.

Fixed that for ya...

[Matheus]

"Japan Sets New Internet Speed Record, Surpassing Max Internet Trunk Speeds By 100 Times"

SMH

So?

[groobly]

No individual needs that.

So what?

[p51d007]

The entire country of Japan has a land area of 145,937 square miles which is around the land area of Montana. That's ONE state not counting the other 47 (continental). The USA is "spread out".