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A "light" transistor to the rescue! by erick99 · 2004-08-17 05:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

The buckyball layer produces what sounds like a transistor of sorts:

The gluing process creates a material composed of larger electron-rich molecules with sufficient power to cause light that passes through to control the direction of other light, providing the switching capability, Sargent said.

With switching occuring at the speeds available through a layer such as that, there would be an incredible decrease in cumulative latency across the 'net. That is, if all or most of the switches are as above.

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."

I wonder what the cost of those type "devices" will be - both direct in terms of the devices and indirect in terms of whatever infrastructure is required to implement them. Well, either way, it's great sounding technology.

Cheers,

Erick

--
http://www.busyweather.com/

Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 05:45 · Score: 1, Funny

With a name like "buckyball", is there anything it CAN'T do??
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 05:46 · Score: 2, Funny

Well, either way, it's great sounding technology.

Cool! You must have the freakiest ears evah.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by TrumpetPower! · 2004-08-17 05:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

"Light" transistor, indeed!

One of my first thoughts upon reading the article was that that's exactly what they've created--an optical transistor.

It gets even better. The original transistor originally played a huge role in replacing human operators in telephone network switches. That also seems to be the first target for this new breed of transistor.

Surely, the optical computer just became much more of a possibility. Yeah, we're still a long way from an optical IC, but this is a big step on that path.

Cheers,

b&

--
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Noctambulus · 2004-08-17 05:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

The gluing process creates a material composed of larger electron-rich molecules with sufficient power to cause light that passes through to control the direction of other light, providing the switching capability, Sargent said.

With switching occuring at the speeds available through a layer such as that, there would be an incredible decrease in cumulative latency across the 'net. That is, if all or most of the switches are as above.

Although I am by no means a router expert, it would seem logical that a majority of the latency in the network is caused by the actual reception and subsequent "analysis" of the packets. After all, the "response time", or "spped" of electricity is at best close to the speed of light.

Thus, a majority of the time spent when moving packets around is probably spent on the routers, when processing the information. As such, switching to light based media should not have a noticable effect latency.

However, with the change of media, more data can probably be sent through the pipe, therefore increasing the overall speed of transfer in a favourable way.

Regardless, the technology certainly sounds exciting.

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"In regione caecorum rex est luscus" -Desiderius Erasmus
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 06:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

What I don't get- couldn't you accomplish the same thing by encoding the addressing into the color layer and just using a prisim for a switch?

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Short+Circuit · 2004-08-17 06:08 · Score: 1

An interesting idea, except it would require a tunable single-wavelength color source.

You could conceivable do it with an incandescent light source (though with a terribly low response time), but I don't think the technology's there yet to do it with lasers or LEDs.

But then, IANAOE.

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tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Rand310 · 2004-08-17 06:11 · Score: 1

Ever heard of red-shift or blue-shift? Frequency of light is not a constant across those distances, especially within the fiber. Though I'm sure you could compensate for it, that might take more data-space than the information itself.

Using color to differentiate streams sounds good until you do the physics.

Though I would like to hear from someone who knows better than I if somthing like that is possible.... encode the routing data in some property of the light, the way electricity cannot, and then a router to take advantage of it.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 06:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

Could simulate a tunable single-wavelength color source with an array of fixed-single-wavelength color sources- but I get your point, that could be prohibitively expensive.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 06:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

I had to think about your reply before realizing *why*. I'm used to thinking about red shift and blue shift only in terms of pure doppler effect- and it's not like the fiber optic cable itself is shrinking or growing. I think you mean the speed of the earth turning affecting how fast the wave travels down the cable- but wouldn't this only affect east-west cables as opposed to north-south?

I also thought we were *already* using color to differentiate voice streams- which is why a single fiber could handle so many more voice calls than copper could (limited to one circuit as a twisted pair is). Are you saying that all fiber is really packet switched at a high rate of speed instead?

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by mrchaotica · 2004-08-17 06:28 · Score: 1

Wouldn't different routers have to be moving relative to each other for that? Except for an earthquake, I can't imagine a router on a rack in a telco data center moving, really...

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"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Hard_Code · 2004-08-17 06:41 · Score: 1

And even if there is some sort of bizarre shift effect...wouldn't the shift be /uniform/ accross the spectrum? I mean you could still split it out, right.

--

It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by mrchaotica · 2004-08-17 07:16 · Score: 1

That depends if your splitter is absolute or relative. It seems to me a splitter would act on a certain wavelength or color (e.g. >= 740nm, or "infrared to orange") rather than "the longest 33% of whatever light we get". With an absolute splitter, the light that started out green goes out the blue gate, and the light that started out red goes out the yellow gate. So it's uniform, but still wrong.

Of course, I'm not an physicist (or even particularly good at optics) so don't just take my word for it...

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"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 07:22 · Score: 1

Free electron lasers.... not cheap, but are continuously tunable single-wavelength sources...
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by mdfst13 · 2004-08-17 07:26 · Score: 1

One router is at the equator. One is in Alaska (i.e. close to the North Pole). They are moving at different speeds. Not sure how much this matters in application, but they are moving relative to each other.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 07:48 · Score: 1, Informative

"Are you saying that all fiber is really packet switched at a high rate of speed instead?"

Yes.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by pavon · 2004-08-17 08:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't know exactly what you are thinking of, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. "Splitting with a prism" is called Wave Division Multiplexing in fiber terminology. The number of frequencies that a single fiber can carry is partial dependant on the quality of the fiber, but mostly dependant on the devices transmitting and recieving the light. Regardless, there are a finite number of frequencies that can be utilized.

If you are suggesting to give each IP in the world it's own frequency - well, there are far to many address even in IP4 to do that with current technology. Even if we could it would be a huge waste of bandwidth, since most of the frequencies will be going unused most of the time.

Alternately, if you dynamically assign the N frequencies to N IP's that currently are sending data, then that will make efficient use of the available bandwidth, but when you get to the end of the fiber, the switch there doesn't know what IP corresponds to what frequency, so it would have to look at the data itself to do the switching. That is what this is doing and it is quite impressive.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by mrchaotica · 2004-08-17 08:12 · Score: 1

Actually, they're not, using the earth as the frame of reference. Take a globe and draw a line between them, then spin it. Does the line change shape?

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"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 08:13 · Score: 1

Ok- then that makes more sense. Always wondered why it's almost always just a single color instead of white coming out of the end of a fiber optic cable.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by simcop2387 · 2004-08-17 08:43 · Score: 1

that wouldn't work, when you mix light like that the frequencies don't really shift, when they hit the prism they'd all seperate into their original frequencies dispite(sp?) what you see, your eyes trick you because those colors would be what would bounce off an object of that color
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 08:48 · Score: 1

Which would be the point, wouldn't it? Putting a serial digital signal down each frequency at one end- and then use the prisim to separate them into those frequencies at the other end to get distinct channels of data (as in, this channel coming from LED 5x26 which we can discern from the frequency color spread is going to LA, where color 5x27 is going to San Francisco)? Except for the frequency shift problem put forth in another post, it should work- but those frequency shift problems mean that the colors are *different* coming out than going in.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by nahdude812 · 2004-08-17 08:52 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually as long as you were communicating only with Earth, this wouldn't be a problem. Red & blue shift as you point out are doppler effects where the frequency is compressed or expanded based on the source of the radiation (light) moving. This effect is only present if the sender and receiver are moving at different velocity vectors (speed/direction). If both are moving at the same vector, there will be no change in perception no matter how significant the doppler effect.

The simple observation of this is recognizing that your car's horn is the same pitch whether you're at a stop light or cruizing down the highway at 90mph.

Now if you think about it for a minute, it's obvious that the earth is involved in 2 curved movements -- revolution and rotation. This means that people on one side of the earth are moving at a different speed from people on the other side of the earth, particularly toward their noon/midnight. From this perspective, people on the dark side are moving faster than on the light side. However, I believe that the theory of relativity would come in to play here and avoid shift. Under this theory, of course, the speed of light relative to your perception of it remains constant despite your velocity. If you consider that the light must continue to travel the same distance, then it's not important whether you're moving faster on the dark side or slower on the light side since regardless of your speed, the light will take the same amount of time to travel the fixed distance of the cable. With out the theory of relativity, we would 'catch up' to the light a small amount, and effect a doppler. Red and blue shift occurs in stars simply because that distance is changing relative to us.

--
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 08:58 · Score: 1

So Wave Division Multiplexing DOES work- but the number of frequencies is limited? So what was all that about temporal multiplexing being the current technology?

Still, I'd expect a given backbone to only have data on it that relates to hosts reachable from that backbone, and that would be far more limited than just IP. I don't see a need particularily to have one single fiber backbone going to every computer in the world- it'd be physically impossible, because you can only have two encoder/decoder sets on a physical fiber from what I understand. Basically what I'm saying is that the serviceable IP ranges at each end of the fiber are a known quantity- thus to acomplish nearly the same thing as this switch is add another envelope to the network protocol stack- which defines the subnet the IP address is in, encode THAT as the color, and use Wave Division Multiplexing on each end.

Beyond that, the router at the fiber/copper junction is STILL going to have to look at the IP address for proper routing, so while being able to look at the IP address without converting to electricity is indeed very impressive, there are other ways to accomplish the same goal with existing technology.

The more interesting thing is the secondary goal- that this optical transistor is the first stage to a fully optical computer- one cabable of being a direct node with no conversion to electricity at all.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Short+Circuit · 2004-08-17 09:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

I thought he was referring to having only one segment lit at a time. Hm.

I'm not all that familiar with the physics of LEDs, but what if you had three long PN junctions? One each for red, blue and green. They're all adjacent on their long sides. Each PN junction has multiple pairs of wires, positioned appropriately in order light up sections of the overall semiconductor crystals. ( Or you could do an LED array of white LEDs. But the long junctions allows for a wider range of values. )

Covering them would be a color gradient plastic, or maybe an oil, for that rainbow effect. Use a lens to focus the entire visible regions of all three PN junctions onto a diffusing white translucent sheet or opaque surface. The light passed from that diffusing device would then be sent through your fiber optic.

On the receiving end, use the prism to separate the light into its RBG component colors, and use diffusing layerss as an equivalent to voltage dividers. Between each layer, leach some of the light to control an optical transistor.

Essentially, you could decode the intensities of the R B and G channels to determine 11-bit segments of a 32-bit address(IPv4), or 43-bit segments of a 128-bit address (IPv6).

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Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 09:03 · Score: 1

Umm... How would you make a "nand" gate out of that?

No need to if your purpose is merely Routing Information, as all you need is a single piece of information- where to send the packet of info on to.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by damium · 2004-08-17 09:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

Although I am by no means a router expert, it would seem logical that a majority of the latency in the network is caused by the actual reception and subsequent "analysis" of the packets. After all, the "response time", or "spped" of electricity is at best close to the speed of light.

This is a common misconception. Electrical transistors have a speed (read latency) that is mostly dependent on the voltage applied to them. (Hence over-volt on CPUs)

This technology would in effect change the rate that the transistor switched, thus changeing the latency.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 09:06 · Score: 2, Informative

Stupid me, should have kept up with the conversation and realized the AC and the guy with the doppler stuff were just asshats.

I really wasn't considering anything quite so complex- if your purpose is routing ONLY then you don't even need IP2- you just need to know that the encoder on the other end of the fiber said that this packet is in the range that goes to such and such router down the line. Even if you only have two frequencies available, this is enough to switch millions of packets for millions of individual PCs between two cities.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 09:09 · Score: 1

And I got entirely taken in by the doppler argument which was false- yes, this is the idea for routable light based on frequency.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by positroniumman · 2004-08-17 09:44 · Score: 1

sigh, how many channels do you suppose you could get using a prism? think about the width of the pulse that actually carries the information. pulses in time must have frequency spread associated with them, the shorter the bits the bigger the spread in frequency. this is basically why colour schemes died along time ago. btw this is known as a photonic bandgap device, and it is not a new idea. Don't get me wrong, better efficiency is great, but it is still a looooong way from being a workable switch
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 10:02 · Score: 1

How many do you need? How many can you get on an electrical Ethernet Switch right now? I've seen 32 port switches- that's only 32 channels needed. The original thought experiment was only a 2 channel switch to begin with- deciding between 2 cities on a backbone.

More complex routing requires IP inspection, but simple routing does not.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by positroniumman · 2004-08-17 10:07 · Score: 1

let me rephrase, in 32 channels (say) how wide (in time) must a bit be to get say 40 Gbit/s transmission rates?
seems to me that width is quite small
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-08-17 10:18 · Score: 1

True enough- but we're not exactly limited to *human visual* color coding frequencies either as long as the fiber is transparent to the frequencies in use, NOR are we limited to thinking in serial, for a set of colors could be bonded together into a single channel.

RGB alone gives several million distinct colors, what more do you want, egg in your beer? All you need to do is refine the tuning on the sending and recieving sides.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by positroniumman · 2004-08-17 10:34 · Score: 1

I don't mean human visual either, since most of this is in the micron range. also too bad because of the size of the wavelengths.
The widths of the bits are the problem, they begin to overlap - too much overlapping of colour channels and all you see is on, not on off on off. So this is maybe what you mean by bonded together. This uses all of our bandwith to make pulses smaller in time, and we must forget about using all colour for switching. making the small pulses is relatively easy (femtosecond pulse width lasers are not uncommon) so this is the route taken.
The real limitation of these schemes is the fact that waveguides (ie fiber) cannot be made "good" for a broad range of wavelenghts, this limits the amount of usable frequency space. then its down to whatever the reciever can detect for the number of colour channels that can be used.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by shadowbearer · 2004-08-17 12:24 · Score: 1

Actually the vector they are moving in isn't as important as whether or not there is a delta V along the line between the observers. If that vector component is not 0 you will observe a doppler shift in the frequency.

You're right, but relativity has nothing to do with it. It's the fact that both of you are on the surface of the earth and your distance from each other is *not* changing unless one of you changes altitude.

Now, if you consider that you can't send a laser beam *thru* the earth, and have to rely on, oh, say, a reflective mirror ahead of or behind the earth in a solar orbit, reflecting the laser off that mirror *will* produce a distance change between the observers, because it doesn't share their frame of reference, ie one observer is moving away from it, the other toward it at any point in time. * and **

Of course you could only exchange messages when both of you have line of sight to the mirror... and the doppler shift would be danged hard to detect.

SB
* Yes, their velocity would cancel out if they were both moving in the same plane relative to the mirror/solar orbit plane. But they're not, the earth's axial tilt relative to it's orbital plane assures that there will always be a slight difference in velocities relative to each other when using the mirror to bounce the beam.

Used a laser beam for visual simplification. Same thing applies to EM transmissions of any kind.

Yeah, that was somewhat hard to write :)

--
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by j1m+5n0w · 2004-08-17 12:44 · Score: 1

DWDM systems can use up to about 160 channels. The channels are separated by a prism, so they don't even have to be running the same link layer protocol. (A single channel can run an OC-192, which is about 10 gbps.)
-jim
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by Cruciform · 2004-08-17 15:23 · Score: 1

IANAOE?

What would being an Oriental Entomologist have to do with optics? :D
Re:A "light" transistor to the rescue! by hcdejong · 2004-08-17 19:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Huh? Automatic telephone exchanges were pioneered by Almon B Strowger, who filed a patent in 1889. By 1922, the UK standardized its exchanges to use this system, eliminating human operators without using transistors.

UK telephone history

magnetic media by TedCheshireAcad · 2004-08-17 05:34 · Score: 3, Funny

A lightning fast transmission medium is no match for a mechanical data access sytem, i.e. your hard disk.

I have a fast internet connection but a slow hard drive. Sigh.

Re:magnetic media by syynnapse · 2004-08-17 05:40 · Score: 1

next up: drives made of actual light. some problems during power outages.

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System.out.println(syynnapse.getSig());
Re:magnetic media by wmaker · 2004-08-17 05:43 · Score: 1

I believe the current solution to this problem was posted yesterday here.

--

What is slashdot?
Re:magnetic media by Xzzy · 2004-08-17 05:45 · Score: 4, Funny

Right! Just get a bunch of fibre optic cards and plug a loopback into each of them. Pipe your data into the interface, and it'll go 'round and 'round until you need to access it later.

Need more capacity? Just fashion a longer loopback cable, so it can hold more light.
Re:magnetic media by cuzality · 2004-08-17 05:50 · Score: 1

>> A lightning fast transmission medium is no match for a mechanical
>>data access sytem, i.e. your hard disk. I have a fast internet connection
>>but a slow hard drive. Sigh.

>don't store it on your hd then, just stream whatever you're doing from the net....

There's a hard disk somewhere at the other end of that fast internet connection.

slow HDD [is less than] fast internet connection + slow/fast HDD
Re:magnetic media by boisepunk · 2004-08-17 05:54 · Score: 3, Funny

it'll go 'round and 'round until you need to access it later
There was something similar on the Commodore 64, a tape drive. 8 tracks anyone?

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main(0)
Re:magnetic media by Jaysyn · 2004-08-17 05:55 · Score: 1

Thanks, that's the funniest thing I've read today.

Jaysyn

--
There is a war going on for your mind.
Re:magnetic media by cuzality · 2004-08-17 05:56 · Score: 1

next up: drives made of actual light

Can't wait to see the neon-crazy mods get a hold of this one...
Re:magnetic media by shufler · 2004-08-17 05:57 · Score: 1

I think you're missing a '<' somewhere in there.
Re:magnetic media by Short+Circuit · 2004-08-17 06:12 · Score: 1

You're better off using a slower medium, so you can store more data per distance between connection endpoints.

Reminds me of something I read about old mainframes storing data in a pool of mercury.

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tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:magnetic media by crownrai · 2004-08-17 06:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

You guys laugh, but it has been thought of before. http://morris.canarie.ca/MLISTS/news2001/0036.html
Re:magnetic media by Guppy06 · 2004-08-17 06:42 · Score: 2, Funny

"and it'll go 'round and 'round until you need to access it later."

In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Re:magnetic media by GPB · 2004-08-17 06:51 · Score: 1

Wow that is really cool. Is there any more up to date information about this or a successfull rollout that you know of?

-B
Re:magnetic media by cuzality · 2004-08-17 06:53 · Score: 1

Yeah, I couldn't remember the escape sequence or whatever to get that character to show up. I thought the meaning was quite clear.
Re:magnetic media by shufler · 2004-08-17 07:21 · Score: 1

As did I. My witty response was to the (unintentionally) ironic AC.

< <
> >
Re:magnetic media by cuzality · 2004-08-17 07:37 · Score: 1

the (unintentionally) ironic AC

They often are.

Thanks for the escape sequences. You have a new fan.
Re:magnetic media by dmayle · 2004-08-17 08:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

The joke's on you. Besides being thought of before (as mentioned by another poster), it's how Cray used to store memory for their super computers. There was a wire that went from the output to the input, and the clock was timed to match the duration of the electron transfer through that wire...
Re:magnetic media by Duhavid · 2004-08-17 08:26 · Score: 2, Informative

I dont know if I would say mainframe, but early computers used what was called a Mercury Delay line

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emt 377 emt 4
Re:magnetic media by coolcold · 2004-08-17 08:58 · Score: 1

as in the passage, they are used mainly from contenients(spelling?) to contenients. ISP connect thousands or millions of ADSL/cable lines through this optic cables so that u can access site in other country.

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Re:magnetic media by Yaa+101 · 2004-08-17 13:43 · Score: 1

Ever heard of mercury delay lines? They are exactly what you describe, only they are abondened long ago, it's a bit of a toxic waste maker... And expensive...
Re:magnetic media by Yaa+101 · 2004-08-17 13:46 · Score: 1

http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/tyco_fs .html http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/delayli ne.html
Re:magnetic media by dgatwood · 2004-08-17 13:47 · Score: 1

Personally, as far as feedback storage is concerned, I'd vote for Williams tube, but....

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Re:magnetic media by Duhavid · 2004-08-17 14:03 · Score: 1

I had read about that as well. Interesting what the early pioneers had to go thru to make things work. I keep thinking that it would be interesting to look on old core memory would be a step up! Mercury lines and CRT memory must have been hard to work with. Glad I can only imagine!

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emt 377 emt 4

Light speed posting by Mr.+Flibble · 2004-08-17 05:36 · Score: 3, Funny

I was going to try for a first post - but the speed of light barrier slowed me down.

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Try to hack my 31337 firewall!

Universal access first by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 05:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

Can we have universal access and better content first please?

-Johan

PS> Oh yeah, contribute to wikipedia.

Re:Universal access first by PitaBred · 2004-08-17 05:58 · Score: 4, Funny

Considering the nature of the Internet, aren't those two mutually exclusive?

--
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Re:Universal access first by NanoGator · 2004-08-17 06:02 · Score: 1

"Can we have universal access and better content first please?"

Yeah because the people laying the fibre and developing the new systems are EXACTLY the people who should be making content available. This would be a lot more insightful w/o the 'first' bit. These people aren't Villagers or SCV's.

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"Derp de derp."
Re:Universal access first by MammaMia · 2004-08-17 07:21 · Score: 1

Nah, just inversely proportional. Signal may increase, but noise increases more.

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"We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences." - John McCain
Re:Universal access first by shadowbearer · 2004-08-17 12:28 · Score: 1

More like the nature of human society, actually...

SB

--
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.

What about Ethernet? by chrispyman · 2004-08-17 05:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

Do you really think that people are going to give up the ease of ethernet when your typical broadband maxes out at 1.5Mbit/s? I predict a painfully slow death of ethernet, which will probably go the way of the floppy drive.

Re:What about Ethernet? by RLW · 2004-08-17 05:44 · Score: 1

Floppy direves arn't done yet! I just got an HP with a floppy drive installed.
Re:What about Ethernet? by Kenja · 2004-08-17 05:46 · Score: 5, Informative

"Do you really think that people are going to give up the ease of ethernet when your typical broadband maxes out at 1.5Mbit/s? I predict a painfully slow death of ethernet, which will probably go the way of the floppy drive."
Eh? You seem to be very confused. Ethernet is not limited to the dinky little 10/100 network I assume you'r running. The gigabit fiber optic network I've got is also ethernet.

--

"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Re:What about Ethernet? by smooth+wombat · 2004-08-17 05:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

What did I just tell you about floppies.
Stop it with this 'floppies are dead' nonsense.

--
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Re:What about Ethernet? by apachetoolbox · 2004-08-17 05:57 · Score: 1

Ethernet isn't going anywhere, this technology wont be used in the last mile just like we don't have DS3's to the door step right now.
Re:What about Ethernet? by TOakes · 2004-08-17 06:08 · Score: 1

No windows handles this fine When I plug my USB drive in it's window will have appeared before i've looked back at the screen.
Re:What about Ethernet? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 06:14 · Score: 1

Does Windows really handle USB drives that badly?

Yeah, it does. People make fun of Macs because of the whole "eject" thing, but once it's expected on windows for a usb drive, people just decided to yank the connection. In windows you have to go to the tray, then select the drive you want to stop, then in the next dialog select "stop device".

I don't think floppies are dead because they are old technology, I think they are dead because.

1) 1.4Mb isn't that much in today's world
2) Floppy drives are cheap garbage
3) Floppy disks are cheap garbage.

Adding 'cheap garbage' with 'cheap garbage' and you get 'lucky to make it to another computer intact'. If I yank an old floppy drive and format some old disks, they'll last for years. Buy new disks and use a new drive, and it's a never ending source of problems.
Re:What about Ethernet? by Philosinfinity · 2004-08-17 06:21 · Score: 1

I think you took the parent post out of context. The poster was not making a comment against Ethernet, but actually supporting the longevity of it. The way I took it, the poster was saying that WAN connections are available at a fraction of what Ethernet LANs are capable of transmitting, thus speed advances are really a negligable. This means that collisions due to network capacity limits are not a factor in finding a new networking access method to replace Ethernet. Further, with the ease of adding nodes to the network, once a new carrier method is needed, designed, and available it will prolly be adopted very slowly.
Re:What about Ethernet? by Anonymous+Writer · 2004-08-17 06:26 · Score: 1

I predict a painfully slow death of ethernet, which will probably go the way of the floppy drive.

Apple is already introducing something called Xsan. A quote from their site...
"Xsan storage networking eliminates the bottlenecks of Ethernet-based network file servers, whose performance will only get worse over time as denser formats such as HD become more common. Using Fibre Channel multipathing, in which two Fibre Channel cables connect a computer to the SAN, an Xsan client can theoretically achieve throughput of up to 400MBps, perfect for multiple editors working on a video project or a compute cluster that needs fast access to data to ensure each node crunches at full capacity."
Re:What about Ethernet? by Mork29 · 2004-08-17 07:08 · Score: 1

Er, my copper based ethernet is 10/100/1000... Who needs fiber for 1Gbit?
Re:What about Ethernet? by Bri3D · 2004-08-17 08:11 · Score: 2, Informative

You USED to need fiber for Gbit Ethernet. Copper gigabit came later. The only real reason to use fiber now is distance and reliability(no matter how you look at it, electricity is less reliable than light).
Re:What about Ethernet? by thephotoman · 2004-08-17 08:29 · Score: 1

Actually, I kinda like Mac's eject thing. Much like Linux's $ mount and $ umount commands. It makes sure that the computer knows that the device is no longer there. Windows, on the other hand, can hang up when you just yank out the media. It can be quite annoying to accidentally remove media from a laptop.

--
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Re:What about Ethernet? by appleLaserWriter · 2004-08-17 09:16 · Score: 1

Gigabit fiber is physically smaller than Gigabit copper. Multimode fiber is about the thickness of a human hair. Single mode fiber is about 1/10 the thickness of a human hair. Surprisingly, single-mode fiber can carry more bandwidth for longer distances than multimode.

If you work in an office building, tilt up one of the ceiling tiles and look around. You will probably see bundles of cat-3 and cat-5 cable ranging from the thickness of your leg, to the thickness of an average human's torso. That same bandwidth could run down a single fiber pair with DWDM multiplexers at each end, or OADM taps along the length.

Now, take your two-story office buliding, and stretch it into a 50-story tower in a big city. Copper might be sufficient for ethernet distribution within a single floor. You need fiber to get data from the ground floor to your corner office up on 50.

Now, suppose that gigabit ethernet isn't fast enough. Just change the lasers at each end of your fiber to 10gig lasers. 10Gig Ethernet on the same fiber. Not good enough? Upgrade to 40gig lasers and OC-768. Still not good enough? Add some DWDM gear at each end, and transmit 2.56 Tbits per second down your fiber, for 4000 kilometers.
Re:What about Ethernet? by Rallion · 2004-08-17 10:45 · Score: 1

When I buy a SATA-capable motherboard, I don't get any drivers on punch cards.
Re:What about Ethernet? by the+real+darkskye · 2004-08-18 00:23 · Score: 1

Until netcraft confirms the floppy is dead I will refuse to believe it!

--
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno

CONTENT!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 05:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

Whats the point of blazing high speeds without the content???

Net's content value improvement rate is trending downwards ..

Re:CONTENT!! by Ra5pu7in · 2004-08-17 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

For the same reason we can now get hundreds of TV channels ... with a similar downtrend in content. Of course, a large part of the problem (IMHO) is that more people want to be content consumer than content creators. Where is that quality and quantity of content supposed to come from? Someone else. There are too few "someone elses" out there compare to all the wanna-be critics who chew up the content that exists and spit it out.

--
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Re:CONTENT!! by wmaker · 2004-08-17 05:54 · Score: 1

Whats the point of blazing high speeds without the content???

The ideas people/companies may have for adding content may not be feasible until higher speeds are reached. (video on demand, video conferencing, etc.)

--

What is slashdot?
Re:CONTENT!! by liquidsin · 2004-08-17 05:57 · Score: 4, Funny

Net's content value improvement rate is trending downwards ..

And you're not helping the situation any...

--
do not read this line twice.
Re:CONTENT!! by Anonymous+Writer · 2004-08-17 06:31 · Score: 1

Whats the point of blazing high speeds without the content???

You'll be getting HDTV porn on-demand. As usual, the adult industry will be the first to test the technological limits of the internet.
Re:CONTENT!! by Washizu · 2004-08-17 06:45 · Score: 1

"Whats the point of blazing high speeds without the content???"

The other day I had to upload 500 digital photos to an online photo printing/sharing service. It took a few hours even on a decent cable connection.

--
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Re:CONTENT!! by sevinkey · 2004-08-17 07:52 · Score: 1

After you throw this kind of bandwidth out there, cable and satellite tv will be on the internet instead. We will have TiVo, without having to record it ourselves. Life is about to get very very good.
Re:CONTENT!! by evangellydonut · 2004-08-17 08:17 · Score: 1

this is where Blue-Lazer p0rn rips over p2p comes into play :-D
Re:CONTENT!! by superpulpsicle · 2004-08-17 10:09 · Score: 1

It's funny but the porn industry is the true test barrier and pioneer for the computer industry. Yet when people p2p porn, no one defends them.
Re:CONTENT!! by Anonymous+Writer · 2004-08-17 10:30 · Score: 1

I know- they were one of the first to do massive amounts of credit card transactions over the internet, did video on demand, spoofed the search engines, they propagate spam, trojans... they tested the capacity and security of the Internet in both good and bad ways that the rest of the "legit" computer industry had to keep up with. In fact I think one of the big secrets about the .com boom is that some of the major success stories were actually porn sites, but nobody wanted to mention that on the news.
Re:CONTENT!! by burns210 · 2004-08-17 11:28 · Score: 1

You have a good point, why have a fiber internet connection when almost everything internet backbone is only a fraction of that speed?

Couple reasons... have a big, massive proxy/caching server and make the internet FEEL like you are using that full fiber goodness.

Your LAN connection is always faster than your WAN, and the further something is away.

Light speed connections are sexy... You want to be sexy.
Re:CONTENT!! by Spy+Hunter · 2004-08-17 15:21 · Score: 1

Blazing high speeds encourage more content. If you could download a movie in five minutes, either the MPAA would have to get off their butts and release movies over the Internet or P2P movie swapping would go mainstream. Either way, more content. If you could host a medium-to-large sized website on your home connection, you could provide more content yourself. Your friends and family could provide more content for you to download (photo, audio, or video blogs instead of text blogs). As it becomes cheaper to host real websites over home connections, more small content projects like Red vs. Blue or Homestar Runner will be able to get started and thrive. The speeds come before the content, but the content does come.

--
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Re:CONTENT!! by Young+Master+Ploppy · 2004-08-17 22:15 · Score: 1

There are too few "someone elses" out there compare to all the wanna-be critics who chew up the content that exists and spit it out
Nah, there are loads of "someone elses" out there willing to provide content, but the trouble is that there are also loads of lawyers out there willing to sue the arse off anybody who says something their paymasters don't like.

--
http://instantbadger.blogspot.com

Meh by Shadow+Wrought · 2004-08-17 05:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Call me when they reach ludicrous speed. Here's hoping the data doesn't all turn to plaid;-)

--
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?

Re:Meh by DarkHelmet · 2004-08-17 05:58 · Score: 3, Funny

"Stop this thing... I order you... stoooooooooooop!" -Me

--
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Re:Meh by JJahn · 2004-08-17 07:50 · Score: 2, Funny

Ludicrous speed sounds like a bad idea. If I pull the emergency brake by, say, unplugging a cable, it could mean serious injury or death!
Re:Meh by Shadow+Wrought · 2004-08-17 08:03 · Score: 1

Uh, mods, did you look at the user name? C'mon people now, if you don't know the Spaceballs reference you have no business moderating a geek site.

--
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Re:Meh by lucabrasi999 · 2004-08-17 09:07 · Score: 1

Uh, mods, did you look at the user name?
Moderators are supposed to READ the post that they are moderating? I don't recall reading that in the moderation guidelines.
Re:Meh by TheoMurpse · 2004-08-17 12:05 · Score: 1

spaaaAAceballs?!?
oh shit, there goes the planet...

Imagine... by databoing · 2004-08-17 05:43 · Score: 4, Funny

A Beowulf Cluster of.....

AAAARRRGHH! My Eyes!!

Re:Imagine... by endlessoul · 2004-08-17 06:30 · Score: 1

"Imagine... A Beowulf Cluster of....."

Of what? Say it! Of Buckyballs. Excuse me for stating the obvious here, but how on God's green earth do you have a super-futuristic technology where data is transmitted through a point at one-trillionth of a second due to something called Buckyballs?

Somewhere, whomever made up the name of this technology is laughing his ass off, as am I.
Re:Imagine... by geomon · 2004-08-17 07:03 · Score: 1

Somewhere, whomever made up the name of this technology is laughing his ass off, as am I.

Named after Buckminster Fuller.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"

Service in Texas by samtihen · 2004-08-17 05:43 · Score: 5, Informative

I few weeks ago I saw that Verizon is starting with some 15mbps lines in Kellar, Texas.

http://news.com.com/Verizon's+fiber+race+is+on/210 0-1034_3-5275171.html

I heard the price was going to be only 44.95 a month. With this kind of speed VoIP and Video communication, as well as video on demand, finally seem pretty feasible.

Re:Service in Texas by div_2n · 2004-08-17 06:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

I find it amusing that they are rolling these high speed services. If you have 50,000 people in a reasonably sized city all with 15mbps connectivity, do you really think they will all get that? I don't know how much ATM bandwidth is coming into any one CO, but I will bet it isn't 750,000mbps. Or better yet, wherever those DSL ATM connections terminate, I bet they don't have that much bandwidth available.
Re:Service in Texas by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 06:55 · Score: 1, Insightful

How is this any different than the broadband we have now?

Hundreds of cable modem users share a single 46mbit/sec downstream port on a CMTS. Do you think hundreds of customers on this port are all able to get 1.5, 3, and 6 mbits simultaneously? They don't.

And that is what providers, especially Verizon in this case, plan on.

And it has been proven, 95% of broadband customers don't use anywhere near their maximum bandwidth.

Bandwidth has had a high user to available bandwidth ratio for years. It's the only way the business is sustainable.

ISP's cannot afford to buy 1:1 bandwidth for every customer, unless we're going back to the 2400baud modem days.
Re:Service in Texas by div_2n · 2004-08-17 10:20 · Score: 1

Overselling is not a new concept, I realize that. But if you ask Bellsouth for example how much they oversell their DSL service, they will tell you they don't. I know because I had 3 or 4 Bellsouth representatives (2 from Atlanta) on the phone on a conference call saying that. The question resulted out of talks describing the difference between their business class and residential class DSL.

To me, that is rediculous anyway because both residential and business usually share the same DSLAM. Maybe they terminate the ATM connection in a different NOC with greater availability of bandwidth, I don't know. But they SWORE they do not oversell their DSL service either on business or residential.

And that, I will bet lots of money, is complete and utter nonsense.
Re:Service in Texas by jonbrewer · 2004-08-17 11:25 · Score: 1

"I find it amusing that they are rolling these high speed services. If you have 50,000 people in a reasonably sized city all with 15mbps connectivity, do you really think they will all get that? I don't know how much ATM bandwidth is coming into any one CO, but I will bet it isn't 750,000mbps. Or better yet, wherever those DSL ATM connections terminate, I bet they don't have that much bandwidth available."

If you have 50,000 people watching 50 channels of HDTV, which just happen to be multicast within the city, you're still well within the limits of OC12 (or, more economically, GigE) out of the CO, while you may be delivering an aggregate 350,000mbps to your customers.

Big pipes to the home are most certainly *not* for surfing Slashdot - they're for delivering "value added" services that companies like Verizon can make a mint on.

Great, speed of light infections too by 192939495969798999 · 2004-08-17 05:45 · Score: 5, Funny

You think it's hard getting a win32 broadband box on the net now? Wait till there are all-optical switches! You'll be hosed before the light from the screen reaches your eyeballs!

--
stuff |

Re:Great, speed of light infections too by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 06:16 · Score: 1, Funny

You're assuming that windows runs instantaniously. Technically you'll be hosed as soon as the power hits, but you'll probably still be looking at a mysterious hourglass pointer.

Faster! by MarcoPon · 2004-08-17 05:46 · Score: 4, Funny

We can do better than that.
What we need is Bistromathic signaling tech!

Bye!

--

SeqBox

That's some fast 'bots by grunt107 · 2004-08-17 05:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

Optical-networking company Infinera is taking another approach... has developed a photonic integrated circuit, a hybrid of optical and electronic technologies... the technology combines discrete functions into a single chip, and can transmit data at speeds of up to 100 Gbps.

Although the 100Gb/s is the max, it would be interesting what the sustained rate would be.
This technology seems to have a better light/energy conversion than the 'bucky ball' solution, since it lists 40Gb/s as the transmission rate.
Perhaps the Inifera solution is limited in distance.

Re:Please Note 'n Stuff by Zardoz44 · 2004-08-17 05:51 · Score: 2, Informative

Please note: The change to "internet" meant that they would treat it is a common noun rather than a proper one. This means you still capitalize it in titles, first-word of a sentence, etc...

Assuming you care what Wired does.

Re:Please Note 'n Stuff by StalinsNotDead · 2004-08-17 05:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

according to Wired the other day it's not 'Internet', but 'internet'.

But it's part of a title; therfore, the first letter of the first, last, and every major word (not as, in, the, etc.) would be capitalized.

Within the body of the text, internet remains uncapitalized.

--
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman

The next step in optical networks: by homeobocks · 2004-08-17 05:52 · Score: 5, Funny

$ beam me up, eth0

I sure hope none of my packets are lost.

--
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING

Re:The next step in optical networks: by wmaker · 2004-08-17 06:04 · Score: 1

I sure hope none of my packets are lost.

yikes, and watch out for collisions!

--

What is slashdot?
Re:The next step in optical networks: by That's+Unpossible! · 2004-08-17 06:12 · Score: 1

I sure hope none of my packets are lost.

Use TCP instead of UDP, and it won't matter!

"The speed of light sucks." -- John Carmack

--
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Re:The next step in optical networks: by JJahn · 2004-08-17 07:52 · Score: 1

As long as you remember to use TCP instead of something like UDP, you'll be fine. The lost packets should be resent, you'll just have to be patient.
Re:The next step in optical networks: by DigiShaman · 2004-08-17 10:59 · Score: 1

I found your lost packets. Though I can sell them back to you, but only for a modest fee ;-) You got a few days, or I'm posting them on e-bay. At least I know they will get sold there.

--
Life is not for the lazy.
Re:The next step in optical networks: by burns210 · 2004-08-17 11:19 · Score: 1

Just don't use UDP!
Re:The next step in optical networks: by Alsee · 2004-08-17 20:35 · Score: 1

Yeah yeah everyone worries about lost packets, but trust me when I say you don't want to step out of a transporter than's been picking up duplicate packets either.

-

--
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.

The Bottleneck by Louis+Savain · 2004-08-17 05:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Re:The Bottleneck by drinkypoo · 2004-08-17 06:07 · Score: 2, Informative

Or someone may think of a clever way around this problem with using optical computers. A poster above suggests using prisms, I think this is a better idea now (a few moments after reading it) than I did at first. Part of the design of IPv4 is that it is designed to be processed in eight bit chunks at a time and to be calculated using trivial and atomic operations which take few cycles to complete. For instance the very use of netmasks lets you determine based on very simple procedures like an xor whether or not a packet matches a rule.

Perhaps characteristics of addresses could be encoded using color/frequency so that the packets would automatically be dumped into the right bucket when they came out.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:The Bottleneck by Short+Circuit · 2004-08-17 06:25 · Score: 1

The original computers were made out of discrete components. While expensive, discrete optical components are still a possibility...

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:The Bottleneck by Anonymous+Writer · 2004-08-17 06:40 · Score: 1

"Unless you have an optical computer inside the switch to make these decisions, you'll still need electronic components."

I can recall reading years ago about the excitement of optical computers being developed, and I can even recall that someone made a large prototype of an optical processor. I presume that there are some implementations in the current industry, but I'd still love to see a fully optical computer. Still waiting :(
Re:The Bottleneck by interiot · 2004-08-17 06:47 · Score: 2, Interesting
The issue that this is trying to solve is to reduce latency (*). It's about 2450 miles from New York to Los Angeles. If you're sitting in New York, and traceroute a computer in Los Angeles, then the difference in time between your ISP's router (which could potentially afford to upgrade to all-optical) and Los Angeles's router should be approximately 13 milliseconds. Right now, it's MUCH higher than this.
Imagine if you could play first-person-shooters with anyone in the world, and it would seem like they were playing next door, no matter how far away they lived. Sure, there's certainly still a great deal of delay between when your brain says "click the mouse button", the mouse button actually gets clicked, the signal travels through the USB port, into the CPU, processed by the game, and sent out as a internet packet, but 13 MILLISECONDS PING, can you imagine that?
- (*) Right now, max bandwidth isn't a technical problem, it's an economics problem... if everybody could afford to buy gigabit ethernet at home, then the internet would definitely be more useful to people.
Re:The Bottleneck by kryzx · 2004-08-17 07:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's an interesting problem, but not unsolveable.

Consider this: You use traditional (wires) bandwidth to do DNS resolution and tracert to plan the route your data will take, this inlcudes all the routers it will go through, and the instructions you need to give each. Then you build your data transmission with the instructions for each optical router at the head, which they will strip off and use.

This way, you have a very small amount of overhead work in traditional bandwidth, and the bulk of your data goes straight to its destination with 100% optical routing.

--
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

Long Jump by The+Subliminal+Kid · 2004-08-17 05:55 · Score: 1

Faster is good? Yes fast is good but faster is becoming less and less important because hops are starting already become the largest influence on the system. We need to look at ways of tending to produce longer jumps between switches and reductions in the number of choke points.

Re:This is wired. by StalinsNotDead · 2004-08-17 05:57 · Score: 1

For a momment I thought HookedOnPhonics(683545) was back.

But, alas, only an Anonymous Coward.

--
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman

Smokey the Bear says... by GillBates0 · 2004-08-17 05:57 · Score: 4, Funny

When using your 100Gb fiber-optic internet at the campgrounds, always practice safety. Surround your network card with rocks to keep the fire from spreading. Be sure when you're done with your internet to put it out with a bucket of water and make sure it has stopped smoking before you leave the area. Remember what Smokey the Bear says. Only you can prevent your 100Gb fiber-optic internet connection from starting a forest fire.

--
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam

Re:Smokey the Bear says... by DigiShaman · 2004-08-17 11:03 · Score: 1

And to think those servers could be using an AMD chip...

Ya, that's right, this is flamebait (pun intended). But hey, it's all for the good laugh. ;)

--
Life is not for the lazy.

Optical has lots of tricks by ElForesto · 2004-08-17 05:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

Ever heard of wave-division multiplexing? The idea is to transmit light packets that contain different wavelengths (or colors) at the same time. I'd like to see that in wide-spread practice as well.

--
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.

Re:Optical has lots of tricks by Keruo · 2004-08-17 09:48 · Score: 1

I was visiting my local ISP's connection center few months ago, and the DWDM came up there.
Someone asked how much are they able to transfer over the fiber using DWDM.
The guy answered that with current 10GBit/s backbone and DWDM equipment, they can throttle up to 140GB traffic through the system.

--
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.

Planning for the Future by The+Subliminal+Kid · 2004-08-17 05:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

Redundancy may soon be more vital than speed.

Once the internet was designed to withstand problems (a euphemism for a nuclear strike) at multiple nodes but since commercial interest like to keep as many things as possible in one building we see today that a small fire in a maintenance tunnel has a dramatic effect on the over all network latency. There just isn't as much redundancy as there used to be and that may be worse for us all than your download time for SP2.

Re:Planning for the Future by dwdm_dude · 2004-08-17 07:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

Of course, enterprises with high bandwidth needs have typically had to pay through the nose to lease capacity (redundant or not) from the huge phone conglomerates. Now they can reasonably buy their own 100Gbps+ equipment to connect data centers and even justify redundant links due to the cost effectiveness of new enterprise-friendly applications of tried-and-true carrier-grade technology. Celion Networks, for example, ships such systems.
Re:Planning for the Future by burns210 · 2004-08-17 11:13 · Score: 1

How about more colleges become internet backbones... Or how about doubling the root name servers from 13 to 26? Why not? Why not have 100 root name servers?

Sounds great, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-17 06:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

What happens when you put all the switches together and actually have to route the packets, and the next hop is "busy" on that light frequency already?

You would either have to:

a) shift the frequency to a different portion of the light spectrum, or

b) somehow delay the light signal until the previous message is completely transmitted through the router.

But without using a light-electrical-light conversion?

I don't know how a) could be accomplished other than using one laser to pump another (but there would not be enough intensity for that), and using cryogenic sodium to slow the light pulse down long enough is not practical in a low cost router (yet).

Any ideas? Or did I miss something obvious here?

Bullshit by That's+Unpossible! · 2004-08-17 06:10 · Score: 1

I've answered this same type of comment dozens of times.

It's not the content value (on TV or the internet) that is going down, it is just that there is more available, which means there is going to be more of what you don't like.

I think if you what to compare the content value of any growing medium, you should look at the amount you liked in the past vs. the amount you like now. I don't see how that number could be going down.

Reality is often distorted by perception.

--
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.

Re:Bullshit by stratjakt · 2004-08-17 06:21 · Score: 1

Not only that, people's tastes change over time. When I was a little kid, I could sit in front of the TV and watch sit-coms for hours on end. I can't stand sit-coms today.

Did TV get worse? Is Will and Grace a "worse" show than "Perfect Strangers" was? Probably not, it's probably a lot more intelligent. I just don't like that kind of stuff anymore.

--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!

Re:Yes, but can it go plad? by Kamel+Jockey · 2004-08-17 06:11 · Score: 1

Yes, but can it go Plad!

Only if it makes it to ludicrous speed first!

--
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!

I have seen the future of the internet by Toby_Tyke · 2004-08-17 06:16 · Score: 2, Funny

More porn, faster!

--
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks

Re: * WDM by nboscia · 2004-08-17 06:18 · Score: 2, Informative

*WDM is very widely used today. Your major carriers all use them. Customers (universities, government, corporations, local ISP's) purchase (lease) individual wavelengths. It's quite a cool way of handling light (buying lambdas), and has been around for a quite bit now. Newer technologies, like MPLamdaS (that's lamba switching, not label switching), allow you to creative virtual wavelengths and do fun traffic engineering per lambda.

Re:it's things like this... by mrchaotica · 2004-08-17 06:24 · Score: 1

radio waves move at the speed of light too...

--

"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

Optical routers already exist by cayblood · 2004-08-17 06:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

Bell Labs invented them in 1999.

Re:Optical routers already exist by cayblood · 2004-08-17 06:28 · Score: 1

One other detail: these routers are supposed to have a switching capacity of approximately 10 terabits per second, and that was four years ago!

Re:Yes, but can it go plad? by Tenebrious1 · 2004-08-17 06:27 · Score: 2, Funny

Yes, but can it go Plad!

I don't know anything that can go "plad". Maybe if you drop an iPod from the top of a building, it goes "iPlad" on the ground. You meant "Plaid"

--
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.

Page not found by Hoi+Polloi · 2004-08-17 06:27 · Score: 1

Great, now I'll get "Page Not Found" or "Bandwidth exceeded" errors at lightspeed. Too bad the server wait times won't change one bit either.

--
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning

"You do not need *light* to get *speed of light*! by PaulBu · 2004-08-17 06:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

... as my former advisor Prof K. Likharev used to say. When you send a sharp electrical pulse down a matched transmission line/waveguide it propagates with, you guessed it, speed of light in the medium. If your insulator is the same SiO2 they use for optical fiber you will get the same speed as in the fiber!

The problem with traditional voltage-based electronics at 40G speeds is that when you drive a SiGi/InP/GaAs transistor that fast it dissipates LOTS of power (measured in Watts per handful of transistors). Moreover, CV^2f/2 power dissipation when you constantly charge/discharge line capacitance to ~1V operating voltage is significant. And of course the maximum operating speed of any substantial logic is determined not by transistor speed but by RC constants of the wiring.

Now, if one departs from traditional transistor logic design, say, to superconductor electronics (which I've spent all my life designing up until the beginning of this year, when my current employer decided to "discontinue that effort"), you can start from a clear sheet of paper. In superconductor case, first of all you lose R in RC, not bad! Second is that when temperatures are that cold, thermal noise (~kBT) is small and operating voltages (pulse amplitudes in our case) could be ~1 mV, not ~1V, and Josephson junctions are pretty happy generating ~1ps wide pulses.

The downside is having to deal with refrigiration, one would not see this technology on the end user's desktop any time soon, but for the telco switching center it is almost doable.

My personal estimates (well, down to the complete circuit diagrams ;-) ) showed that we could make a 128x128 non-blocking self-routing packet switching matrix at 60Gbps/line that could fit on the palm of one's hand, and after packaging with refrigerator fit on half a rack.

The "packet" feature is important, often when "optical computing" people talk about their switches they conveniently omit the fact that while switch might be fast enough for some 120GHz of bandwidth the re-configuration of that takes milliseconds (think long-haul traditional SONET lines), we were talking about routing/re-configuration at ~256 bits packet length (think TCP/IP).

Oh, well, it's a pity that I can not work on this stuff now, it was -> |- THIS close to actually coming up with a viable demo/product. Maybe some day...

Paul B.

pbunyk (at) lycos (dot) com

P.S. Google for SFQ/RSFQ for more info

WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY OTHER EYE by OmniVector · 2004-08-17 06:46 · Score: 1

it's not even my birthday

--
- tristan

we don't need it by yagu · 2004-08-17 06:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

The telcom industry is STILL reeling (I know, I'm a layoff casualty) from heavy investment in optic fiber still dark today. The technology to lube the internet to lightning speeds (whatever that means) is merely interesting, but unnecessary, and unlikely to come to fruition unless there is compelling evidence of a burgeoning market -- one I doubt exists. I wouldn't invest my money in it. Once bitten...

Consider the comment from the article: Polishuk also questioned the need for higher-speed networks. "Who's going to buy it when 40-Gb networks aren't getting off the ground?" he asked.

Re:we don't need it by yagu · 2004-08-17 11:52 · Score: 1

It really is price vs. demand. But the demand isn't there. The capping by ISP's is a gimmick... a way to make money.
Don't you think for a second if there was demand people would gladly pay to light up that fiber? Right now the telcoms can't sell traffic on those pipes for 10% of what it cost to put in.
It isn't that there's so much available bandwidth, it's that there is no demand or evidence of demand to push the bandwidth to the next quantum. Yeah, some people today may be living on the edge of what they consider acceptable for throughput, but unless they're willing to prop up the rest of the population that doesn't care noone is going to invest/re-invest in those big pipes.
Those switches and routers are too damned expensive because noone is flocking in droves to buy them -- when they are sold in one's and two's, their price won't go down.

Is that... by jbarr · 2004-08-17 06:57 · Score: 1

..."light" or "Light"...now I'm confused.

--
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!

Light speed is damn close. by SharpFang · 2004-08-17 06:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

1s. Minimal human decision time. Light travels 3e8m
1e-1s. Minimal human reaction time.
1e-2s. Minimal human recognition (sensory reaction) time.
1e-3s (1ms). Sensible task switching time.
1e-4s. in-task high level function time.
1e-5s. in-task medium level function time.
1e-6s (1us). Single microcontroller instruction; in-task low-level function time.
1e-7s Single high-speed microcontroller instruction.
1e-8s Single low-end CPU or DSP instruction time. Light travels 3m.
1e-9s (1ns) Single modern CPU time, light travels 0.3m
1e-10s A single modern CPU gate reaction time. Light travels 3cm, just above 1 inch.

Using standard $8 24bit ADC you can get down to the 3cm level with a $3 1MHZ microcontroller.
Using 1Gbit interface, your bits moving at light speed are 30cm away from each other.
A 300m LAN won't allow ping roundtrip shorter than 2 microseconds.
A 3000km (global network games) line WILL introduce perceptible delay.
A CPU of 3 GHZ just has to have its cache built in. Memory placed 3cm away causes 1 cycle long request-response roundtrip.

--
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2

Johnny von Neuman by gelfling · 2004-08-17 07:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

Covered it in one of his books. If you want a computer to function with a one nanosecond cycletime, in a perfect universe it could be no larger than the cube root of one foot along any axis. You simply bump into the speed of light at that point.

Not the magazine by Screamingliner · 2004-08-17 07:29 · Score: 1

It's just Wired News. The mag has nothing to do with it.

Re:it's things like this... by DLR · 2004-08-17 07:33 · Score: 2, Informative

Yes, radio moves at the speed of light, but light has much more bandwidth because it's a higher frequency. Also you don't have worry about generating stray RF with fiber optics.

--
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH

may be limited by ISP by MammaMia · 2004-08-17 07:39 · Score: 1

The type of connection is less relevant if your provider (Comcrap, for example) limits your upload speed. I'd bet downloading those 500 pics would have been much quicker simply because they allow it to be that way.

--
"We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences." - John McCain

Re:may be limited by ISP by Washizu · 2004-08-18 23:16 · Score: 1

At double the speed, it still would have taken an hour.

--
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.

Welcome by Soporific · 2004-08-17 07:44 · Score: 1

I would welcome our new highspeed overlords here in the St. Paul suburbs. Hint hint, overlords...

~S

eehh by GoClick · 2004-08-17 07:50 · Score: 1

When was the last time Huston lapped Anchorage?

The dopler effect is about relative speeds. Reletivly speaking two points on the earth only move because of continental drift.

As long as you and I are alive Huston and Anchorage will always be 1,817 miles of cold glass appart.

Re:Please Note 'n Stuff by Rick+the+Red · 2004-08-17 07:52 · Score: 2, Funny

Assuming you care what Wired does.

That's wired, you insensitive clod!

--
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.

Except that optical "switching" is slow... by PaulBu · 2004-08-17 08:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

Your solution would require all-optical (what they call, "transparent") switch to re-configure itself on each of the packets that you are sending down. It's OK if one packet length is a complete ISO image, but is you are just sending 256 bytes to update your position in the game on other player's computer -- well, tough luck! ;-) Did you know that like a third of the packets on the Internet at any given time are under a couple hundred bytes long -- mostly TCP/IP ACKs.

Paul B.

Careful by Boronx · 2004-08-17 08:28 · Score: 1

We should do the proper calculations first, or the internet could pass through an asteroid field or bounce into a supernova. This isn't exactly dusting crops.

--
Play Command HQ online

Three Dimentional CPU by DigiShaman · 2004-08-17 11:10 · Score: 1

Though it would help if the CPU die was multi-dimentional. In other words, have the CPU take on the form factor of a cube or sphere filled internally with gates.

Now, getting rid of the excess heat...that's a whole other problem.

--
Life is not for the lazy.

Prisim? by SnprBoB86 · 2004-08-17 11:25 · Score: 1

Seems to me that most applications wouldn't need 40Gb/sec of bandwidth. Although more bandwidth is always better :-)

Maybe upon establishing a connection the optical transmitter and the destination switch/router could agree on a wavelength range and then mechanically adjust something in the switch to use a prisim to guide light of that wavelength into the correct outbound light optical fiber.

Would that be possible? Or is it possible that I have a major missunderstanding about fiber optics and the like...

--
http://brandonbloom.name

bah, light speed too slow! by aggiefalcon01 · 2004-08-17 13:16 · Score: 1

We must take the internet to ... Ludicrous Speed!

--
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.

Re:Light speed is [hard to exceed] by Spy+Hunter · 2004-08-17 15:50 · Score: 1

That's why you slow the light pulse down slightly while you figure out what to do with it. You read the address portion, let the rest pass by into some sort of delay device (either a loop or a material wich actually slows the light), calculate how to switch the packet, then direct the light as it leaves the delay device. This adds a tiny bit of latency but the throughput can be the same as a straight piece of fiber.

--
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}

Who Needs It? by tgrigsby · 2004-08-17 17:02 · Score: 1

Polishuk also questioned the need for higher-speed networks. "Who's going to buy it when 40-Gb networks aren't getting off the ground?" he asked.

In other news, Bill Gates was heard to say, "Well sure, 640k wasn't nearly enough memory for all the cool stuff we came up with. But trust me this time: no one is ever going to need more than 4 gigs of RAM!"

--
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***

Re:Please Note 'n Stuff by gopherd00d · 2004-08-17 21:18 · Score: 1

Well, if you guys want to get really technical, both capitalizations are correct but have slightly different meanings:

internet is a noun, short for internetwork, meaning an interconnected group of independent networks. The Internet is a proper noun referring specifically to the current worldwide public internet.

R, G, B are not special by glyph42 · 2004-08-18 00:03 · Score: 1

RGB are only special to us humans. A prism really doesn't care about them, and neither does a fiber optic cable. You could send information on many wavelengths together, and filter each of them out. I believe this is already done in commercial fiber optics. To do prism-based switching, you would need a source which can deliver a different wavelength for each "address". That might be cool, I'd be glyph@654nm.com.

--
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.

Re:R, G, B are not special by Short+Circuit · 2004-08-18 00:31 · Score: 1

In that case, you could do as many source colors as you wanted. Use four colors for IPv4. Use four cycles of four colors for IPv6. (There don't seem to be all that many different colors for LEDs. infrared, red, amber, green, blue, and variations on brightness and efficiency.)

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)

Gigabit? prrrft! by mgcarley · 2004-08-26 13:07 · Score: 1

Ahh... but what about 10GBPS ethernet? I remember looking at the standard being pretty much or nearly finalized back at the end of 2002...
What about Cisco's new mega-routers that they demo'd at one of the recent conferences (circa June)?

--
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley

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