Most of us here can probably remember when 100Mbps Ethernet was the fastest you could get in your home or even business. Some of us can remember when 10baseT was all the rave, and still some others can remember a not too distant past when 4Mbps token ring networks were considered extremely fast. How times have changed.

Now, when Gigabit Ethernet is cheap and commonplace, researchers want to push the envelope even farther. The goal of 100Gbps Ethernet is not that far off, it seems, with a recent demonstration of a 16.Tbps transfer rate over a massive 2,550km distance. The technology is considered to be the best solution for achieving 100Gbps in a form that everyone could eventually use it. This is nothing within our reach just yet, but it is a lot closer than many think.