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100-Petabit Internet Backbone Coming Into View

Posted by kdawson on from the movies-on-whim dept.

lostinbrave notes laboratory work that could lead to long-haul network cables capable of exceeding 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. "Alcatel-Lucent said that scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables, resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer, or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago. ... The transmissions were not just faster, they were accomplished over a network whose repeaters are 20 percent farther apart than commonly maintained in such networks, which could decrease the costs of deploying such a network."

3 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Who cares, solve the last mile already. by grumpygrodyguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would trade this in a second for a guarantee that the last mile problem will be resolved in my lifetime.

    It's been 10 years and I'm still stuck with a crappy 1.5m/256k (1.2/180 actual) ADSL line.

    --
    The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
  2. Will we notice? by maggotsforbreakfast · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does anyone know what percentage of our current trans-atlantic bandwidth we are using? The full article says that we currently have 10 Petabits/s*k, so this would be about a 10x increase. Thats a lot, but less then I thought.

  3. Re:second.kilometer by jgs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe old hat to you network engineers, but I was previously unfamiliar with "bits per second.kilometer".

    Thanks for the info. No, this is not old hat to network engineers. I've never heard of it and I've been working in the industry for more years than I care to admit. I think it might be old hat to marketing people though, since it appears to be a classic BIG MARKETING NUMBER. Normal networking people would call 15.5 Tbps * 7000 km... 15.5 Tbps.

    Maybe it's true that optics geeks really do use numbers this way, I dunno. But the fact it comes from an AlcaLu press release doesn't lend it a whole lot of credibility.

    I am massively unimpressed by the headline on the Slashdot story. Maybe another article headlined "kdawson swallows inflated AlcaLu marketing fluff hook, line and sinker" would be in order?