Bell Labs Break Record With 31Tbps Via a Single 7200km Optical Fibre

Mark.JUK writes "Alcatel-Lucent's research and development division, Bell Labs, has successfully broken yet another record after it used 155 lasers (each operating at different frequencies and carrying 200Gbps of data over a 50GHz frequency grid) and an enhanced version of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) to send information at a staggering speed of 31 Terabits per second over a single 7200km long optical fibre cable. Previous experiments have been faster but only over shorter distances or by using a different type of fibre optic cable entirely."

Comments

Too bad

[MrEricSir]

Too bad the bandwidth cap is only 1 GB per month.

Re:Too bad

[SuricouRaven]

'Uncapped' means 'there is a monthly limit, but we won't tell you what it is. And we call it a fair usage policy.'

Re:Microsoft already did this

[Vanderhoth]

This is probably more applicable to ISP backbones rather than LANs. Although it'd be nice if I could move digital videos from my standard machine to my media server upstairs that quickly. I ripped my entire DVD collection which took me the better part of a year to do, now whenever we buy a new movie the first thing I do is rip them so I don't end up having to do a dozen+ movies at once.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Vanderhoth]

They might not rip up existing infrastructure, but they might start replacing it as the old stuff starts breaking down or requires maintenance.

This is what internet is made of

[cachimaster]

Not wifi, wimax, 3g, 4g, ethernet, satellite, etc.
All those tecnologies are just "last-mile" ways to bring data from this big pipes to the users. Internet is made of optical fibre.

Re:This is what internet is made of

[Kjella]

Last decade called and want their post back, this decade fiber is your last mile. The rest is just for in-house distribution or on the go.

Re:Not going to happen.

[plover]

Do you think all the big-boys are going to tear up their existing long haul fiber and undersea trunks and replace it with something new? It'll never happen. These stories pop up on /. with disturbing periodicity and I've become immune to them.

What part of the story said they needed to tear up the existing fiber, or even lay new fiber? Sure, they would need to add new gear at the terminals, but that's cheap in comparison to laying cable.

And even if they did have to lay new cable, for this kind of bandwidth I imagine they'd have already begun planning it. The more you carry, the more money arrives.

Wonderful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful! Now my porn collection will download in mere MINUTES!

The question is

[maroberts]

...whether a special type of cable was used, or whether just fitting different transmitters and receivers at each end of the cable will do the job without the need for putting down an entirely new fibre optic cable?

Re:Microsoft already did this

[bws111]

TFA says it is for undersea cables, not LANs.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[arth1]

This is probably more applicable to ISP backbones rather than LANs.

I fear the first application will be high frequency trading, with links between bourses.

How far is 7200 KM?

[timeOday]

For comparison, Tokyo to Honolulu is "only" 6200 km (then 3900 from Honolulu to San Francisco). Washington DC to Paris is also 6200 km. So, as far the planet earth is concerned, it's a very realistic maximum distance of interest.

obligatory NSA tie-in

[NikeHerc]

This was likely at the request of the NSA so they could download all our traffic quicker.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[tom17]

What medium are you throwing it in, treacle?

For your "Staggering stat of the day"

[Anonymous Coward]

The switching is so dense and so fast, that the 7200km of cable has *in flight* 146 gigabytes of information at any given time. You can back up your typical "150GB" (143GB actual) OS hard drive and user data, and be done sending it before it starts reaching the other end (if you could buffer it to send that fast, naturally). Is that some crazy shit or what?

Re:For your "Staggering stat of the day"

[DutchUncle]

Back in 1979, when fiber was brand-new (and we were experimenting with speeds you wouldn't even bother with for TOSlink today), we hooked up a 5km spool of fiber to both sides of the same optical "modem". Using a Z80, we got an interrupt on the receive side apparently simultaneous (in the same clock cycle) to putting a byte in the transmit port - which sort of makes your DMA controller unhappy. Everyone figured there was a short or a cross-connection, because nobody could believe the speed. And that was a snail's pace in comparison to *each* laser of this system.

Re:For your "Staggering stat of the day"

[Smerta]

Reminds me of my first day (literally) on the job, out of school (EE/CE).

Tech lead held up a one-foot segment of wire (about 30cm for you metric-minded folks).

"Know what this is?"

"Yeah, a piece of wire."

"Yes, but it's also memory. This holds one bit." Then he held up a longer piece and said "And this holds a byte." Then he went on to explain (really, remind me) about propagation times, eye diagrams, etc....

Re:For your "Staggering stat of the day"

[DutchUncle]

Yes, light speed hasn't changed; switching speed, however, has changed dramatically, and it's switching that gives you data rate. I think we were using 6 Mhz Z80s - the latest and greatest at the time (1979). Slip your decimal point 3 places to the left. :-)

Re:Microsoft already did this

[arth1]

Why? This has nothing to do with lower latency.

Indirectly, it does. Latency is affected by bandwidth usage, and the wider your pipe, the greater the chance of achieving minimum latency.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Shatrat]

Wrong, this still requires amplifiers every 100km, just like today.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[jandrese]

It does a bit. The higher the speed of your link the lower the clocking delay in getting out all of the bits for a transaction. Will a couple of nanoseconds matter? With HFT it just might.

Re:The TRUE test

[jandrese]

Well, a blu-ray disc weighs about 16g and hold 50GB of data, so 500kg would be 1,562,500GB worth of storage. Your station wagon doing 50kph will need exactly 6 days to travel that for, or 518,400 seconds. In that much time, this optical link would have transferred 2,057,011,200GB.

Your station wagon's bandwidth isn't even in the ballpark. Even if you use those super experimental blu-rays that hold 1TB each you aren't even getting close to the bandwidth of this link.

Tap

[michaelmalak]

Did the test include a simulated NSA tap, to test the impact of that optical degradation?

Re:Microsoft already did this

[Lumpy]

I can get 20,000Tbps over a 500 mile long cable right now if all I send are 1's or only 0's.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[Lumpy]

latency of the processing gear is far higher than the time to travel through the Transatlantic cable.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[Bengie]

What do you mean by this? Processing of the router and photonic equipment is nano to microseconds, the travel time of the photons is in milliseconds.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[NatasRevol]

What, are you shoving 3's down your pipes?

Re:Microsoft already did this

[arth1]

Minimum latency is the issue

Topsy-turvy, kiddo. For timing critical systems, it's maximum operational latency that matters.

Best case is for ricers who want to impress each other. Average and median values are what most pros are concerned with - bang for the buck.
And worst case is what those running timing critical systems look at, and spend big money on improving.

Meh

[azav]

Talk to me when it's 31 Tera Bytes.

Re:Not going to happen.

[j1m 5n0w]

Wrong, this still requires amplifiers every 100km, just like today.

They don't explicitly say that there were no repeaters for this particular test, but that is strongly implied. (Sloppy reporting.) However, they do compare it to a test done recently over 10,000km with no repeaters:

Then in January 2012 a Japanese team working out of NEC successfully transmitted 4Tbps over a single “ultra-long haul” (10,000km) fibre optic cable (no repeaters) by making use of WDM just like Alcatel-Lucent (here). Lest we not forget all the other developments, such as the successful UK test of a new type of hollow fibre optic cable that earlier this year delivered speeds of 73.7 Tbps (here).

Alcatel-Lucent might have just set a new record and one that it is arguably most notable for its distance but such records are clearly made to be broken. GCHQ will probably get a headache if they want to “tap” (spy) on the next generation of transoceanic cables.

I had no idea that those kinds of distances were possible without repeaters. This is, indeed, big news.

Re:No repeaters

[BitZtream]

No its not. This cable uses amplifiers, and the article mentions a previous 10,000km cable that didn't require repeaters but only has a 4Tbps data rate.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[dadelbunts]

Hurrrrr no. Bandwith is how much data you can move, and latency is how fast it takes you to ping the servers. I can send you a boxtruck full of 2TB HDDs. The bandwith would be phenomenal, the latency not so much.

Re:Microsoft already did this

[Lumpy]

No 3's the sharp edges get stuck on things.