5 ms·

World record: 109 terabits per second over single optical fibre

19 points by ukdm 16y ago

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Too expensive for my laptop.
perlgeek 16y ago
Sadly it doesn't state the length of the first transmission channel. Length multiplied with bit rate is the real figure of merit - and 165km * 102Tb/s is really impressive.
angdis 16y ago
OK, but can you really call "one" fiber with "multiple" cores a "single" optical fiber? All the same, pretty amazing stuff. The current state of the art in systems which are starting to get deployed now is 100Gb/s per wavelength on a single optical fiber. Each fiber can carry 10's of wavelengths. These 100G systems can use existing fiber that was run for 10G systems. They exploit more advanced modulation techniques than the old "on-off keying" used in 10G. Backbone carriers are starting to fill up the so-called "dark fiber" that was over-supplied ~10 years ago. This is creating the demand for 100G and eventually higher.
- perlgeek 16y ago
  > OK, but can you really call "one" fiber with "multiple" cores a "single" optical fiber? Depends on what they actually used. There are special optical fibers with air holes (google for "photonic crystal fibers"), if they produces such fibers to guide multiple modes independently, you can really call it a single fiber. If they used separate fibers within a single plastic cladding, you can argue about that. If they used multiple fibers separate plastic claddings, they probably would have been shouted down at the conference where they presented their results :-)
danohuiginn 16y ago
More impressive to me is that the first commercial fiber-optic system worked at 45Mbps. In 1975.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Back 25 years ago I worked for the phone company. I was excited to learn that the way fiber works is essentially to carry multiple channels based on divisions of color. Of course, when you stop to think about it, that's precisely analogous to carrying multiple frequencies of radio, or audio (as with a modem). But thinking of this in terms of multiple colors being transmitted simultaneously really brought the point home.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  That is good, but still 109Tbps is 2 million times faster. That's an improvement of about 1.5x per year for the past 35 years. Hitting 45Mbps out the gate is great. But improving it at that rate for 35 years is some serious engineering.

19 points by ukdm 16y ago

Too expensive for my laptop.

Sadly it doesn't state the length of the first transmission channel. Length multiplied with bit rate is the real figure of merit - and 165km * 102Tb/s is really impressive.

angdis 16y ago

OK, but can you really call "one" fiber with "multiple" cores a "single" optical fiber? All the same, pretty amazing stuff. The current state of the art in systems which are starting to get deployed now is 100Gb/s per wavelength on a single optical fiber. Each fiber can carry 10's of wavelengths. These 100G systems can use existing fiber that was run for 10G systems. They exploit more advanced modulation techniques than the old "on-off keying" used in 10G. Backbone carriers are starting to fill up the so-called "dark fiber" that was over-supplied ~10 years ago. This is creating the demand for 100G and eventually higher.

perlgeek 16y ago
> OK, but can you really call "one" fiber with "multiple" cores a "single" optical fiber? Depends on what they actually used. There are special optical fibers with air holes (google for "photonic crystal fibers"), if they produces such fibers to guide multiple modes independently, you can really call it a single fiber. If they used separate fibers within a single plastic cladding, you can argue about that. If they used multiple fibers separate plastic claddings, they probably would have been shouted down at the conference where they presented their results :-)

danohuiginn 16y ago

More impressive to me is that the first commercial fiber-optic system worked at 45Mbps. In 1975.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
Back 25 years ago I worked for the phone company. I was excited to learn that the way fiber works is essentially to carry multiple channels based on divisions of color. Of course, when you stop to think about it, that's precisely analogous to carrying multiple frequencies of radio, or audio (as with a modem). But thinking of this in terms of multiple colors being transmitted simultaneously really brought the point home.
kenjackson 16y ago
That is good, but still 109Tbps is 2 million times faster. That's an improvement of about 1.5x per year for the past 35 years. Hitting 45Mbps out the gate is great. But improving it at that rate for 35 years is some serious engineering.