Internet Heading to Light Speed

dbaker writes "Wired Magazine has a very interesting article about the future of optical networks and the barriers we face before this technology is commonplace."

Comments

The Bottleneck

[Louis Savain]

Superconnect's Lehenbauer agrees that "it's fascinating" to have material for an optical switch, but warns "it could be awhile until an all-optical network is possible." Lehenbauer said switches and routers must identify individual packets and route data intelligently, tasks that are not possible using a simple optical switch. "Unless you have an optical computer inside the switch to make these decisions, you'll still need electronic components."

Therein lies the bottleneck. Unless we develop optical computers (not for a while), we still need electronic switches and computers to analyze the content of the optical data in order to make intelligent decisions as to which direction the data should be channelled to.

Not to minimize the importance of this development, but until we do have optical computers, we are condemned to live life in the slow lane. But then again, someone may think of a clever way around this problem without using optical computers. One never knows.