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'Slow' Light To Speed Up the Net
JPawlak writes "Researchers believe that it may be possible to increase the speed of the Internet by slowing down certain parts of it by using metamaterials. Metamaterials could be used to replace the bulky and slow electronics that route Internet information, allowing for faster Internet speeds. As data nears its destination, the frequencies must be separated. The light must then be converted into electrical signals, which are stored, routed, and converted back into optical signals. The conversion not only adds significant cost and complexity to the process, but slows down the transmission as well. However, if the light signals could be slowed during the switching process, they would not need to be converted into an electrical signal. 'The ability to slow the light could be a tremendous force for telecoms that is sure to enhance speed and efficiency,' says University of California professor Xiang Zhang."
Am I the only one who thinks that sounds a bit paradoxical?
'The ability to slow the light could be a tremendous force for telecoms that is sure to enhance speed and efficiency'...
Yeah, there's a real big chance that (at least US) telecoms are going to bother for a looong time.
NT
"The metamaterials work of Professor Xiang Zhang and his team at the University of California at Berkeley is being highlighted in a paper Wednesday in the online version of the journal Nature and in another appearing Friday in the journal Science."
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=61321
I thought one had to use repeaters every once and a while (every few km?) anyway in fiber optics, which AFIAK work by doing just what this is talking about avoiding, translate light into electrical signals back into light. Why is it so bad to have this conversion happen at the switch if it's already having to happen periodically anyway, and won't using this technique probably just result in more repeaters in the network? Or is it just that the process of multiplexing and de-multiplexing (if I have the term correct) is particularly slow? Can anyone with more detailed knowledge of these systems comment?
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature07247.html
C'mon, if we ever want to overcome the limits of general relativity and make interstellar travel commonplace, we should be trying to invent ways to make light go faster, not slower!
You know, like on Futurama... right?
Someone already beat you to it.
It should be referred to as velocity challenged.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
was the picture caption:
"Metamaterials might mean the end of all these wires"
I initially thought the subject was over the journalist's head.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
Or we could remove the unconstitutional packet sniffing equipment on the backbone.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
So how does the "meta material" know where to route the traffic ? Surely the information is in the stream and to read it you have to convert it first. It's not the speed that's the problem, it's getting the routing information from the stream. If you can read the data directly from the stream, why slow it down at all ?
Demultiplexing multiple channels from an optical fibre isn't routing. This technology could speed the mux/demux stuff up tremendously (saving a lot of cable) but you'll still have a bottleneck at the actual routers that need to read and direct individual packets.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Correct me if I'm wrong (knowing /. that will happen in about 8 seconds) but if you slow down light enough wont that turn light into an electron? Wont that completely defeat the purpose?
Wandering Wombat (531833) once said: "a watermelon is NOT a puppydog"
What this is all about is finding some way to do short-term optical packet storage in switches. As yet, there's no optical equivalent of RAM. All-optical gates can be built, and simple logic is possible, but there are no good storage elements. So at present there are optical switches (no queueing), but not optical routers. In order to combine packets from multiple input paths to a single output path, some of the packets need to be delayed until there's free time on the output path. Routers have output queues in RAM to do this. The idea here is to find some way to do this without RAM.
Optical delay lines are simple enough; they're just sections of fibre optic. There are designs for pure optical routers which have little delay loops to which packets can be diverted while waiting for free time on an outgoing line. The delay is fixed, so this sort of thing tends to work better if all the packets are the same size, as in ATM. This new material, where propagation speed varies with light frequency, might be useful as a variable-delay storage medium. Maybe.
This is an area of much active work. Several clever ways have been developed to work around the no-RAM problem. Sort of. None of them are really satisfactory, in the sense of being able to build an optical router that does what an electronic router does now. The network backbone has to be designed around the limitations of the optical technology.
(Note that some optical switches are referred to by their vendors as "routers". They're not. Some of them, the ones with MEMS mirrors, for example, are circuit switches, like a classical phone switch.)
Isn't the speed of light supposed to be constant? You should do some investigation into Lambda routers. They switch individual wavelengths of light onto separate paths for specific routing of information. Several vendors already have these on the market.
TFA reads as yet another clueless academic group thinking they are going to change the world by racking up their buzzword count.
You can slow down or speed up light but what effect does either have on information density (hint hint..absolutely none) so who cares?
Isn't the switching theme just a rehash of old ideas like multiplexing different frequencies on the same fiber and optical path switching? Both technologies are in production use today...
I think this technology is aimed at replacing the $1M+ repeaters that sit at the ocean floor and will all need to be replaced within the next 10 years.
The OP might describe a passive device that could last far longer and need no power supply, much like transformers are used to convert electricity voltage/amperage ratios for long or short distance transmission.
Delaying or buffering the analog light signal is just a teensy part of the process. A typical packet needs to be detected, isolated, have its CRC checked, be inspected, have its addresses twiddled, have the CRC recalculated, and then queued for forwarding. It's gonna be really hard to do these things optically.
In addition most optical delay devices are going to have a strong phase shift over frequency characteristic, a very bad thing.
Methinks the materials folks should stick with what they know and not speculate on the uses.
...what these guys had to go through.
Now the telco companies will have another way to missell their "faster-than-the-speed-of-light" broadband!
Just install a powerful magical force field... That'l slow light down easily.
"However, if the light signals could be slowed during the switching process, they would not need to be converted into an electrical signal." :)
It's seems, like they want remove "conversion into an electrical signal" (slow part).
P.S.
I thought, speed of light is constant
Wouldn't it be better to increase the speed of light instead, so we can travel to distant star systems in reasonable time and get superior internet technology from aliens instead?
Here's an idea, what if you used one of these ideas at a fiber termination point? You "read" the signals header using part of the light ray, and divert the rest of it to the "slow buffer". After a few microseconds, the path is chosen, and the light ray is reflected back into the system, outputing to another fibre... Or is that just silly? Sounds like optical switching to me, although it does lead to degradation of the signal, presumably a repeater could be integrated into the system?
I recommend Microsoft products.
Researchers believe that it may be possible to increase the speed of the Internet by slowing down certain parts of it
Didn't Comcast already try that?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A few years back a Boulder, CO based company by the name of Network Photonics had successfully created an OOO switch however the telco situation at the time forced them to shut their doors. However it was very nice piece of tech that implements on method of not having to do an electric step in switching (not quite the same method as described in the article).