Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Central Florida in the United States have successfully demonstrated transmitting a shatteringly high 255 Terabits/sec of data over a new type of fibre optic cable.
Before we get into the how and what, let's examine that number a little closer: How fast is 255 Terabits/sec? It is the ability to download:
* 32 Terabytes per second. That's 32 entire 1TB hard disks every second.
* About 8,000 full HD (1080p) compressed movies per second, or all of the 316,997 feature movies on IMDB in about 40 seconds.
According to Cisco, global internet networks in 2013 shuttled approximately 29 Terabytes of data each second. This could be handled by a single fibre of this new network. Compared to today's fastest single-fibre networks (topping out at 100Gbps), this one is about 2,550 times quicker.
Okay, so it is fast. Blazingly so. But how?
The new fibre optic network is based on a seven-core fibre compared to present-day fibre cables that contain only a single core. Multi-core fibre cables have traditionally been challenging to manufacture, but recent developments are increasingly making this type of faster cable a reality. Additionally, this hyper-network utilises newer signalling technologies that further optimise data transmission.
If the current-day fibre networks are imagined as a single-lane highway, this is a seven lane highway with the added magic of each car having two additional hover cars stacked above it. And at less than a fifth of a millimetre in diameter, it doesn't require much more physical space than present-day fibres. The net result? Plenty of added data on the same superhighway.
We live in an era of relentless data creation. Often without even being aware of it, users are generating huge amounts of data via apps, services and social networks. According to IBM, at present the world is generating 2.5 billion GB of data each day. Putting that rate of production into perspective, 90% all the information in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. In other words, it has taken mankind about 12,200 years (the dawn of civilisation to about two years ago) to create just 10% of all the world's information.
Advancements such as this will form the bedrock of internet backbones that will fuel the exponential demands of tomorrow's bandwidth-hungry society.
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