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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."
Yup! It's similar to traffic congestion problem that someone figures out how to solve every couple months. If everyone's driving fast and there's a slow point, all the cars back up. If everyone, hell - if one person, slows down and leaves room inbetween their cars, that gives the tight spot enough room to accommodate the traffic and the congestion dies.
It's a rather simplistic model compared to internet switches, but it sort of works. If you don't overload the switches, you'll have less network congestion. Less Network Congestion=Faster Communication
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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
I think I read somewhere (/.?) that one physicist tried beaming a light through a metal block (I think it was copper) to test how much got through, and found that what little made it through the metal block arrived at the sensor faster than the control test (about 5x c?).
When a packet gets to a network device the body is stored in attached ram and the header is pushed into the routing engine which determines the egress port and queues the packet for TX. When the packets turn for TX comes up the body is retrieved from the ram and pushed down the line.
That memory interface is one of the biggest pain in the rear parts of building a high capacity router.
Now if instead of storing the body in ram you could spin it out around a fiber loopback that'd be mighty handy. You'd save yourself the time and effort of converting, storing, retrieving and reconverting 90% of the data.
Unfortunately life is not that simple, at 10gigabit you get 33bits per meter. That means that a 1500byte frame occupies about 360m, even if you could knock the speed down 90% you would still need 36m of whatever. And that's just so that you can get it all out before it starts coming back in again.
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.