Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Double Optical Fiber Transmission Capacity
ms writes: "Yesterday golem.de reported that the Optical Communication and High-Frequency Engineering Group at the University of Paderborn (Germany) claims to have made a technology practical which doubles the transmission capacity of optical fibers to 80 GBit/s. In their so-called "polarization division multiplex data transmission system" they don't only send one but two mutually orthogonal light waves through the fiber. They say the only big problem was the dispersal of the light waves which limits the data rate. Additional they had to fight against the phenomena that the polarization direction of the light waves changes while it goes through the fiber. Now, after two years of research, they invented an "automatic optical compensator of polarization mode dispersion" which fights both the limitations. With this gadget they were able to send data at a rate of twice 40 GBit/s (that's 85,899,345,920 Bps) over a test-line of 212 km. And "only the available equipment limited distance and data rate". As we all know, optical fibers build the (cronically overloaded) backbone of our beloved Net. (BTW: That's Net., not .Net!)" Here's the babelfish translation, too.
Cool! That's an unexpected side effect the moderazis had never thought about.
Another side effect is that I just NEED to troll, because I'm stuck at +50 and must get modded down to be able to see my karma climbing again...
No. you see, it's funnier to troll at +2, so I must keep mny karma above +25. If you look right above, funny: +1, offtopic: -1, trolling at (+2, offtopic): Priceless!
I worked as an Intern for the Department of Agriculture, and it's strictly a Microsoft shop. There was a madate set by someone up top that EVERY computer in the Department use Windows. It's kinda sad, considering how much M$ wanted to charge us for a WebDAV solution.
I sig for world peace