BT and Alcatel-Lucent Record Real-World Fibre Optic Speed of 1.4Tbps In the UK

Mark.JUK writes "The United Kingdom's national telecoms operator, BT, has successfully teamed up with Alcatel-Lucent to conduct a field trial that delivered real-world data speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second over an existing commercial-grade 410km fiber optic link. The trial used a 'record spectral efficiency' of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz and Flexgrid technology to vary the gaps between transmission channels for 42.5% greater data transmission efficiency than today's standard networks. The speed was achieved by overlaying an 'Alien Super Channel' (i.e. it operates transparently on top of BT's existing optical network), which bundled together 7 x 200Gbps (Gigabits per second) channels and then reduced the 'spectral spacing' between the channels from 50GHz to 35GHz using the 400Gb/s Photonic Services Engine (PSE) technology on the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS). It's hoped that this could help boost capacity to those who need it without needing to lay expensive new fiber cables."

Comments

please report in standard units

[Trepidity]

That's about 875 micro-library-of-congresses per second, assuming 600 dpi LOC digitization. Getting close to breaking the coveted milli-LOC/s barrier!

Re:please report in standard units

[Kjella]

Everyone who uses standard units knows it's just over 1 kLOC/fortnight, don't go all SI on us.

Re:please report in standard units

[timeOday]

Let's see, the summary contains: 1) the bit rate 2) the link length 3) the bit rate per Hz and 4) the percentage improvement over what they were using before.

What is it you're complaining about, exactly? Or is this just a pavlovian response to any story about bandwidth?

Re:DSL..

[Kjella]

Yeah, except it takes a blazingly fast line and makes it even faster. At this level of aggregation no single customer is going to notice much, you rarely hear people who have a big last mile pipe complain about the backbone speed. Nice to see the backbone keeping up with FTTH and such, but really the main issue is that fiber is still for the few. Or to turn on gloat mode, I'm not sure what's behind my 100Mbps pipe but it seems pretty damn fast to me.

Just wait..

[Gaygirlie]

Just you wait, they'll raise all speeds to that, but then slap a datacap of 500MB on it.

Re:Just wait..

[philip.mather5551]

No, no, no this is BRITISH Telecom. One of their engineers will draw up perfectly feasible and realisable plans for an even better version, management however won't be interested and so the plans will be left in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'. In the meantime some foreign competitor will eventually come to the same level fives years later and proceed to patent it six ways from Sunday and make £500 bazzilion from it.

Storage capacity

[StripedCow]

real-world data speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second over an existing commercial-grade 410km fiber optic link.

Meaning the link can store only 1.4 Tb/s * 410km / c = 239 MB. (Where c is the speed of light in the fiber link).

Bah, that's nothing.

Re:Storage capacity

[Bengie]

There is a 16tb/s connection that has a 680km range available right now and a 1tb/s link that was tested to have a 13,000km range and should be ready for real world soon. Those two have slightly better storage capacity. There is also the 1pb/s connect with 56km range, but that uses a special new type of fiber that is much more expensive and both will take a while to see real-world use.

Re:DSL..

[timeOday]

you rarely hear people who have a big last mile pipe complain about the backbone speed.

Let's say it's Sunday evening and Netflix is getting choppy. How would you even know if the problem is the last mile or backbone?

Re:DSL..

[plover]

The difference is that DSL is running data over old Cat 3 voice grade lines, and there is a clear technological benefit to moving to an alternative media for distribution. The reason is noise: Cat 3 was never designed to reject it. Coax, Cat 5, and other wire types were specifically engineered to help reject noise at different frequencies. And the better the category of wire, the better the throughput.

Fiber doesn't generally have that same kind of problems (unless you foolishly installed cheap plastic optical fibers.) There isn't a special "greased lightning fiber" people can turn to that carries more data. Instead, advances in lasers, optics, and encoding technologies are used to increase throughput by replacing the transmitters and receivers.

In general, if you need more throughput in a fiber environment than commercially available transmitters can produce, your only choice is to pull more fibers. Whereas in DSL-land if you need more throughput, the rational choice is to abandon the technology completely and move to a different media.

Re:DSL..

[necro81]

Fiber doesn't generally have that same kind of problems (unless you foolishly installed cheap plastic optical fibers.) There isn't a special "greased lightning fiber" people can turn to that carries more data.

Speak for yourself - I just picked up a $5000 S/PDIF cable from Monster Cable that moves those bits so much faster than any other cable on the market. When you hear the results, you can just tell that the 1's and 0's have so much more definition and crispness than ordinary commodity cables.

Re:DSL..

[plover]

Fiber doesn't generally have that same kind of problems (unless you foolishly installed cheap plastic optical fibers.) There isn't a special "greased lightning fiber" people can turn to that carries more data.

Speak for yourself - I just picked up a $5000 S/PDIF cable from Monster Cable that moves those bits so much faster than any other cable on the market. When you hear the results, you can just tell that the 1's and 0's have so much more definition and crispness than ordinary commodity cables.

I hate to disappoint you, Skippy, but that's just regular optical fiber that's been SpeedWaxed. You still need to buy a tube of Denon Optical Fiber SpeedWax and coat the fibers monthly. Otherwise, the ones tend to get a bit fat, and the zeros get a little skinny. Without it, the highs will have a pronounced distortion on the even harmonics, and the phrenological ephemera will subluxate the transception. Oh, and don't forget to get their Shielded optical cable, specifically designed to reject RF interference. Get the one with gold plated connectors to ensure rich bass.

Re:DSL..

[gregski]

Although noise rejection isn't normally an issue, different fibres do have different bandwidths:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

and then there's the hollow fibre mentioned in the article, which achieved 73.7 Tb/s!