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2.56 Tb/s Transmission Record

RalfM writes "2.56 terabits of data per second in new transmission record by Bell Labs, Lucent's research arm." So this thing could transmit my entire mp3 collection in under a half second.

54 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. And what then? by Saib0t · · Score: 5, Funny
    So this thing could transmit my entire mp3 collection in under a half second.

    Good, and then you'll have to wait 4 hours for your HDD to write them ;-).

    --

    One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
    1. Re:And what then? by Fweeky · · Score: 2

      > Good, and then you'll have to wait 4 hours for your HDD to write them ;-).

      This transmits 320GB/s; food for thought is that most system MEMORY architectures would struggle to reach 1/400th of that. Yummy.

    2. Re:And what then? by Saib0t · · Score: 2
      2500 (megabytes)/30 (megabytes/s) = 83.33 (seconds)
      Sure, 83 seconds, for 2.5 GB, but we're talking here about transfer capabilities of 320GB/s, so approximately 11000 times faster than your HDD can write data... I fail to understand why you replied with these figures.
      --

      One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
  2. Re:Terabyte? by Peyna · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tera is a prefix meaning one trillion (10^12), in this case it refers to one trillion bits (not bytes).

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    What?
  3. Re:what a fat pipe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    but no seriously can anybody think of a practical use for a tb/sec connection?

    pr0n. lots and lots of pr0n.

  4. Re:what a fat pipe by morgajel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    this will do wonders for out backbone- maybe even help us lower the general price of high bandwidth net connections. imagine if your local ISP's incoming bandwidth could easily be doubled? that *might* mean more alternatives/chaper bandwidth for us consumers.

    --
    Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
  5. Re:what a fat pipe by Peyna · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not for one person, but for a million people, I could think of a lot of reasons for one.

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    What?
  6. Re:what a fat pipe by glwtta · · Score: 2
    uh, telcos? in other words the companies that products based on this will be targeted at?

    Question's like "who needs this much bandwidth/disk space/ram/cpu power" seem rather silly - don't worry, we'll catch up :)

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
  7. How practical exactly..... by happyslinky · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I have to admit 2.56 Tb/s is darn impressive the article doesnt mention if this can be applied to currently existing fiber optic networks. After having invested millions in new fiber and equipment for my area I seriously doubt my provider (twc) would be willing to just jump up and make large (read as: expensive) modifications. Especially if our network is "just good enough". Advances like this are interesting but how long will it take to "filter down" to us consumers?

    1. Re:How practical exactly..... by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most of these speed records are about as applicable to everyday communications problems as the Thrust SSC's land speed record is to the problems of everyday ground transportaton.

      Eventually the technological advances will influence everyday communications technology, but for now they're a gee-whiz thing that's of little direct value.

    2. Re:How practical exactly..... by chill · · Score: 2

      Actually, Time Warner was one of the first Lambda Router customers last year. The LambdaXtreme unit is what the article mentions and it is a super-long-haul unit. AOL/TW was supposed to be using the 1.6 Tbps version for their coast-2-coast backbone.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    3. Re:How practical exactly..... by ImaLamer · · Score: 2

      If your provider [twc] is Time Warner Cable they might.

      In my area they went to work faster than a lot of cities. Now they dominate the market and we are the second city to get HBO on demand and we also have another video on demand library.

      They own all that content that I er you want to steal so they might actually be interested.

      Nice try... but if you wanted to shoot down the practical side you should have pointed out that your computer isn't going to like all that data so fast.

      Streaming mp3s, every song... ever!

  8. Ping by Kizzle · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybee I can finaly get a good ping in quake now.

  9. Re:Terabyte? by glwtta · · Score: 2

    Actually, though technically a terrabit should be 10^12 bit, I think they mean the binary power closest to one trillion - 2^40 (or whatever it is). I believe that's technically called a Tebbibit or somesuch nonsense, that never caught on so everyone just calls it a terrabit (except for HD manufacturers who try to use this to pass off their products as having more space than the really do)

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
  10. To where? by SpinyNorman · · Score: 4, Funny

    So this thing could transmit my entire mp3 collection in under a half second.

    Sure, and unless you have a storage device that can accept data at that speed, the only place your MP3s are going is /dev/null, so you may as well save the net bandwidth and use the mv command.

    1. Re:To where? by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      Actually, and I'm serious, I'd be impressed if he could move data to /dev/null that quickly. I don't know of any small computer bus architectures available right now that could handle that kind of speed.

      More impressively, almost 4 million people could streem unique mp3's over this line simultaniously.

    2. Re:To where? by JordanH · · Score: 2

      This kind of speed would not be for connecting computers to each other directly, but rather big comm backbones. On each end, fast switches would split this out into more manageble rates.

    3. Re:To where? by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      That's exactly what I'm trying to say.

  11. Re:Terabyte? by glwtta · · Score: 2

    or whatever number of r's it has

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
  12. well now I am torn by glwtta · · Score: 3, Funny
    Is it a Beowulf cluster of these that I want to imagine, or do I want to go for the usual "that's a whole lot of pr0n!" comment?

    being trite and obvious has never been harder...

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
    1. Re:well now I am torn by Alsee · · Score: 2

      12:00:00.0 installed 2.56 terabit internet connection.
      12:00:00.3 downloaded every existing JPG of Natalie Portman.
      12:59:59.8 downloaded Natalie Portman.
      12:59:59.9 Put grits on the stove.

      P.S.
      Ok, she was in a starwars movie, but it was a bad starwars movie. Ok, she's attractive, but she's not amazing. So, why the hell is she this huge running /. routine? And what's with the Hot Grits?

      -

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      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    2. Re:well now I am torn by Alsee · · Score: 2

      extremely intelligent. Kinda geekish too

      Ahh. I don't know much about her out-of-character.

      But, uhhh... the grits? hehe

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  13. Re:Unfortunately it would still take 10 minutes.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    This may come as a shock to you, but resizing a 400x300 picture to 400000000x300000000 does not result in a more detailed picture.

  14. Re:what a fat pipe by Salsaman · · Score: 2

    Why, for downloading pr0n and playing quake of course !

  15. Thats nice. by Yarn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The theoretical maximum (for silica) I've heard quoted is 40Tbit/s, but I'm sure you could squeeze a bit more out. The current limit is the gain spectrum of the Erbium Doped Fibre amplifiers that make sure a signal can travel long distances, these have a (relatively) narrow gain band. Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (think of them as diode lasers, without the mirrors) could have a wider spectrum than the optical fibre! Lots of problems with them currently though.

    I think I'll wait for the quantum dot lasers to catch up.

    --
    -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
    1. Re:Thats nice. by dstone · · Score: 2

      The theoretical maximum (for silica) I've heard quoted is 40Tbit/s, but I'm sure you could squeeze a bit more out.

      Hmmm. I'll tell you how to squeeze more out... take whatever was giving you 40Tbit/s before. Lay down 7 more of those. In parallel. Presto! Now you've got 40TBYTES/s. Repeat as required.

      "Buy 8 and I'll throw in a parity bit for free!"

    2. Re:Thats nice. by Yarn · · Score: 2

      That's cheating dammit!

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      -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
    3. Re:Thats nice. by fiber_halo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, the article said they used raman amplification, not Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers. Raman can be used in either the C-band (1530 to 1565nm - typically where EDFAs are used), or the L-band (1565 - 1625nm). Actually, I think Raman can be used at any point in the spectrum, but don't quote me on that because I am not a physicist!

      EDFAs do allow signals to travel long distances, but the problem is that they are "single point" amplifiers. The signal gets attenuated down quite a bit after traveling 50 miles or so and then is boosted back up by the EDFA. The signal to noise ratio has already dropped too low and can't be recovered. So with EDFAs you are limited to a relatively small number of hops (six or so) before it has to be electrically regenerated (detect the signal and then electrically send it to a laser to be retransmitted cleanly).

      Raman amplifiers use an effect called Stimulated Raman Scattering that uses the fiber in the ground as the amplifier itself. By using a pump laser transmitted into the fiber (typically opposite to the direction of data flow), the power of the pump laser's low wavelength is transferred in the glass to the higher wavelengths of the data signals. Amplification is then distributed along that 50 miles of fiber or so between pump lasers. The signal power never gets as low with Raman as with EDFAs, so the signal to noise ratio is kept higher. That's how they are able to get much longer distances between electrical regeneration out of these new systems.

      I don't know much about SOAs, but I've heard they are not good for multichannel systems. Something about the fact that they are noisy? I think they are good for single channel applications.

      This research is great and all, but telecom providers are having enough trouble selling capacity on their existing EDFA systems. Something is going to have to drive a lot of demand for bandwidth before systems like this one from Lucent get deployed.

    4. Re:Thats nice. by Yarn · · Score: 2

      There are diode lasers with ~33THz bandwidth currently available (generally used in picosecond pulse generation)

      These use multiple quantum dots to engineer the gain spectrum.

      --
      -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
    5. Re:Thats nice. by Yarn · · Score: 2

      only 20dB of gain, slightly more than half an EDFA, and far less than a Raman.

      The benefit of the quantum dots is that each dot has a gaussian gain profile, so if you have a huge number of them you can get a (nominally) flat gain profile, compared to the normal sqrt curve.

      Current prototypes don't have enough bandwidth for the whole fibre, but they are far more efficient and cheaper than Raman amps.

      --
      -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
  16. Re:Kosherliciousness by glwtta · · Score: 2

    um, I don't think this thing is meant as a "consumer" kind of service.

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
  17. Re:Bandwith problems? by chill · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, 'cause the LambdaXtreme unit used is unbelievably expensive, and you need at least 2 of them.

    Also, you need EBDA single-mode fiber, which isn't the majority in the ground.

    Soon, though.

    Charles E. Hill
    Core Network Engineer
    Lucent Worldwide Services

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  18. Re:Novels? by glwtta · · Score: 2

    I think this is meant for the "common person" to understand. Of course the "common person" has a really good idea of how a novel, or even a giganovel compares to digital content such as web-pages. So I really think the point of the comparison was to have a Big Number. :)

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
  19. Engineer wanted by dstone · · Score: 4, Funny

    So this thing could transmit my entire mp3 collection in under a half second.

    Engineer wanted for creation of 2.56Tb/s DRM system. Must be able to scan for copyright flags in data stream and deny transfer permission.

  20. Re:Novels? by Random+Feature · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No they're not. Grrrr...

    Maxtor started the base 10 crap in the mid 90's so stupid users could figure out how much space they had.

    64kbps, 128 kbps, 384, 768, 1.54 Mbps...

    And file sizes are STILL in traditional base 2. When someone says a file is 1KB, it's 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes.

    64KB of RAM is 65536 bytes, not 64000.

    Just because someone bastardized the numbers for idiots doesn't mean it's actually propagated into reality.

    Packaging and marketing doesn't change the guts, it just makes it easier for the average joe to feel like s/he knows what s/he's talking about, even if they don't.

    --
    I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
  21. 2.56Tbps=320Gigabytes/second by markh1967 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What sort of device can read that quickly? That's an order of magnitude or so faster than the fastest RAM I've seen. I suspect they simply transmitted a simple repeating pattern rather than actually reading and writing data from a device of some sort.

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    1. Re:2.56Tbps=320Gigabytes/second by BoneFlower · · Score: 2

      Probably. Still, its an advance, and with the internet being central to todays computing experience, with this tech on the horizon, its an incentive to keep Moores Law going(in addition to the fact that if AMD OR Intel slacked off the other would eat them alive)

      Also, as I said in a previous comment, this would have potentially huge advantages over current network technologies in clustering.

  22. Transmission Record by Alsee · · Score: 4, Funny

    And in related news:
    These same engineers hope to set a new 1.00 Tb/s reception record later today.

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    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    1. Re:Transmission Record by Alsee · · Score: 2

      What type of electronics run at terabit/second speeds?

      I'm making an educated guess here, but they probably use a passive beamsplitter. Probably 32 to 128 beams of different frequencies. (Like a rainbow from a prism.) Each beam gets one sensor with that fraction of the data rate. This is done in other high capacity optical systems.

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      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  23. Re:what a fat pipe by Emugamer · · Score: 4, Interesting


    okay so now you put up the challenge I had to go looking.. damn you

    1/2 serious 1/2 not so serious post here...

    Lets imagine the population of new york which is a tad less then 19 million. now lets give each of them a phone.
    given the assumption that no more then 35% are on their phones at any given peak time we have 6.65 million pone conversations going on. Now lets assume that of these phone calls no more then 40% are inter-city phone calls which would use this type of pipe.

    2.66 million calls now.

    Now lets say that compression algorithims bring the average phone call bandwidth to say 20Kbit/s

    quick math leads that to 53 Gb/s so all of New York uses for voice communications on a high end is 2% of this pipe.

    so now we have 98% left to fill

    Ive heard that an *average* (this puts us in the minority) computer user on an internet connection will use 40kbit on average during a session with the net. and with that number on average there could be 64 million people using that line (which seems high to me) but I can't find any statistics to backup that 40kbit estimate at this time.

    So here of course are the lame responses:

    one script kiddie with an Outlook "add-on", a remote exploit he downloaded somewhere and to much time on his hands

    One large dorm full of p2p, porn, warez hungry students

    one slashdot reader who wants to test to see if this article is true.

  24. Re:what a fat pipe by BoneFlower · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Clustering. Currently the bottleneck in clusters is network connections, simply put most computers you will cluster are faster than 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks. THe faster you move the data between systems, the faster your cluster- High end supercomputers do this, maximizing transmission speed between the individual porcessors as much or more than the CPU speed.

    Lets say you take 4 Quad PIV 1Ghz systems, build two Beowulf clusters. The one with Tb/sec networking between the systems will be faster, noticeably, than the one with Gb/s networking.

    This will also push things like Gb/s networking from its heights down to the average person. I don't see the average person having a Tb/s network anytime soon, but Gb/s networking will probably be more common within a couple of years. That will probably be the biggest benefit of this advance, the people that absolutely need the fastest networks go to Tb/s, and those that only WANT a fast network now get Gb/s

  25. Re:Very practical. by Emugamer · · Score: 2

    that wasn't really the question.. I think most ofus know that our data/voice is going through fiber, the question washow expensive is it to upgradecurrent systems to the newest technology.

  26. Re:Novels? by NonSequor · · Score: 2

    No, the base two numbers are stupid. They are only marginally reasonable for RAM size, but it makes no sense for harddrive sizes. Can you tell me how many bytes are in 43MB, quickly? Mixing base 2 and base 10 makes no sense because humans always have to convert it to base 10 in the end.

    --
    My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
  27. Re:Novels? by mistered · · Score: 3, Interesting
    No, they are. Gtrrr indeed!

    Read this:

    Some sources define a megabit to mean 1,048,576 (that is, 220 ) bits. Although the bit is a unit of the binary number system, bits in data communications are discrete signal pulses and have historically been counted using the decimal number system. For example, 28.8 kilobits per second (Kbps ) is 28,800 bits per second. Because of computer architecture and memory address boundaries, bytes are always some multiple or exponent of two. See kilobyte, etc.

    So what's that mean? An ISDN 64Kbps B channel is, in fact, 64000 bits per second. A typical 115.2Kbps maximum rate on a PC's serial port is 115200 bits per second.

    Hard drives are also measured using SI definitions. The power-of-2 definitions come from memory. Memory devices often inherently have power-of-two sizes, since the n address bits going into a memory provide 2^n addressable cells. Hard drives have no inherent reason to be a power-of-2 size so SI units make much more sense.

    --
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  28. Huh? by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    Most people I know have way more then 2.5gigs of MP3s, I think I have 20 or so myself. Taco indicated that he had about 150gigs himself. (1.28Tb = 163TB)

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  29. Re:Kosherliciousness by fiber_halo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ping times (for small ping sizes) are approximately equal to the amount of time it takes for light to pass through the fiber and back. Most people in telecom use 1ms per 100 route miles of fiber as a rule of thumb. (remember the fiber does not follow a straight line between cities!) So if it is 4200 route miles between NY and LA, your ping will take 42 ms to get there and 42 ms to get back = 84 ms.

    You can't change this basic fact of physics. If you were running somehow on a microwave system instead of fiber, you would actually approach the speed of light in free space, so your ping time would be a little faster.

    By the way, there are other factors that go into the delay of your ping besides propagation delay. Other things such as: congested buffers in routers along the way, serialization delay to clock the packet out of your device (negligible on fast links, but a big effect on dial-up), the response time of the remote device, devices delaying packets to do an ethernet arp, etc... Propagation delay usually ends to be the biggest factor when you are talking about ping times.

  30. Re:what a fat pipe by Emugamer · · Score: 2

    Send on Demand Entertainment ... its the only thing that could satiate this type of pipe and then only with a large subscribition base

  31. Re:Novels? by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    Can you tell me how many bytes are in 43MB

    What the hell diffrence does it make? I mean really? Are you ever going to need to know the exact number of bytes of that file? (and if you are, are you ever going to need to figure it out by hand?)

    The maximum size of anything on a computer is going to be a base2 number, always. two gigs max for a file means two gigs, (2^30). There is no more reason to mesure ram in that size then hd space.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  32. Taco's MP3 Collec by Our+Man+In+Redmond · · Score: 2

    So this thing could transmit my entire mp3 collection in under a half second.

    Most of those gains are due to the following ingeniuos compression scheme:

    1. Download Taco's copy of Bobby Vinton's "Melody Of Love".

    2. Instruct the client to make 135,275 copies locally.

    --
    Someone you trust is one of us.
  33. And this helps me.... how? by tweakt · · Score: 2
    ...have doubled the distance record for high-bandwidth, ultra long-distance transmission by sending 2.56 terabits (trillion bits) of information per second over a distance of 4000 kilometers (2500 miles), roughly the distance between Orlando, Fla., and San Diego.

    Yet, I still can't even get 144 Kilobits/s from Verizon at 5 miles... where's my Fiber-to-the-home?

  34. With Pipes Like this.... by ASyndicate · · Score: 2

    I can see that the media industry (maggots) will have a plan for you to have a 500gb/sec connection and your machine will be a thin client to a server at the RIAA HQ (If it is not already destroyed), Cant to much about copyright 'protection' now could we?

    As In, If you want a 500gb/sec pipe you have to run one of our thin clients. This pipe will only work with it. No PCs will be able to use it because of Encryption, authentication etc.....

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  35. Re:what a fat pipe by Com2Kid · · Score: 2

    Real time broadcasting of videos from studios. No more damned taped delays. :)

    All sent in whatever formats are needed, all at once. Nice and speedy like.

    I myself am sick and f*cking tired of MPEG2 compression artificats in my digital cable. :(

  36. Re:Impressive by arkanes · · Score: 2

    For the testing to be meaningful, you need to be able to check and compare it with what you get at the other end - So they need SOMETHING recording the data, at both ends.

  37. Re:Bandwith problems? by chill · · Score: 2

    "Dense" in DWDM commonly means more than 10 wavelengths simultaneously, though it varies depending on the vendor.

    Pushing beyond 40 Gbps requires turning the laser on and off faster -- something that is going to be a real trick considering how fast it is moving right now.

    Of course, finding the other components that can actually USE data moving at 40 Gbps, much less multiple streams of it, THAT will be the trick.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.