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Internet traffic requirements double every two years. With streaming video becoming more and more popular, not to mention the expectations for Internet traffic thanks to cloud computing and mobile phone use, we're not surprised. The solution lies in fiber optics, which is based on glass fibers (the size of human hair) that carry signals throughout the world by sending light over long distances. The efficiency breaks down when routers are used to convert the optical signals to electrical ones and then convert the signals back again for transmission. The capacity of fiber optics cables needs a boost to stay up to speed with our increasing Internet diet. Fiber optics revolutionized telephone communications and researchers are hoping it will do the same for Internet speed.
"We're going to need much faster networking to handle the explosion in Internet traffic and support new large-scale applications like cloud computing," Daniel Blumenthal, Director of TOEC, said in a statement. "Our goal is to make energy-saving technologies that will allow applications and the underlying networks to continue to scale as needed. You could think of it as greening future networks, and the systems that rely on those networks." To achieve Ethernet at 100Tbps, fundamental improvements in the underlying technologies will be required, he adds. "We're going to need dramatic breakthroughs across multiple disciplines, not only in the core Ethernet technologies but in Ethernet-based networking and in the engineering and measurement systems used to develop and test these new technologies."
User Comments: 68
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i think they would not be able to implement it on the time they said. why the big jump from 1tb to 100tb? isnt that like, too big? idk. maybe we should also focus on wireless instead of this, well, maybe. i think they wouldnt be able to change all of the existing lines to fiber optics by then (imo). which do you guys think is more sustainable?
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princeton said:Elitassj4 said:
How the frack will you write 1Tbps on your HDD/SSD ?
By 2015 HDDs will be gone. And SSD's will probably start to become obsolete compared to the next great thing.
Yep... the next best thing, which is what? they're expecting Mass Storage Servers to be in every home by these dates or something? hahaha =P
Sounds brilliant except for the storage 'limitations' of today anyways.
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Internet traffic doubles every 2 years... I wish my internet speed would. Its a clear lack of competitive behavior from the ISPs. I'm so sick and tired of running 1.5 Mb dsl.
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Puiu said:
We can't even use the 1gbs ones without bottlenecking. We don't need better fiber optics. We need better hardware.
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I love how talk about these bold claims but then in the real world no one can deliver them until long after they've become proven technologies in the lab.
Considering that the majority of North America will be at least ten years out getting up to 100MB/s internet due to extremely high roll-out costs combined with political wrangling, I won't hold my breath for gigabit speeds let alone terabit speeds.
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twiztidsef said:
This might spawn some type of strange new internet based machine. With good enough specs to fully utilize the bandwidth, and with enough logic to get what you use the most. I doubt it though.
Chrome OS? In a couple of years anyway.
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Damn. Seemed so exciting, until I read the comments... -____-
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LNCPapa said:
I think my signature says it all - I've had the same sig since 3DSpotlight (not sure about the predecessor).
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Elitassj4 said:
How the frack will you write 1Tbps on your HDD/SSD ?
haha......now thats hilarious.......the way technology is moving is moving to fast now is totally amazing.
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You wont see that speed even if they COULD get it to you. ISP's and incumbent telecoms make there money by sweating their assets (rather than sweating their asses off). they wring the most value out of the existing infrastructure. as digging up roads and laying new cable is very expensive. Even then they only let you have as little speed as they can get away with, so that they can delay the next round of investment in infrastructure. This also allows them to incrementally upgrade (your received speed) , using tiered price plans, without actually doing anything. Being the best is NOT profitable, being just good enough gets the most cash.
That why USA only has 4mbps when, If Gorge Bush had pushed the Telco's you could be looking at 10mbps lowest and averages of 20 and highs of 50 & 100mbs. It wasnt JUST Big oil who made contributions.
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I'd love to see speeds like this but I'm a bit skeptical (just look at how ISPs and cellular providers like to nickle and dime us already). Whenever it comes to higher speed tech. though possibilities shoot through the roof. Can't wait.
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There would have to be a lot of redundancy built into this network. I would hate to think what would happen to a city if a trunk line is broken.
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great news
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I just moved to a new apartment, and the fastest DSL that they offered was 1.5Mbps (only option for cable was Time Warner, no thanks). I wish these researchers would put their energy into making an affordable way to get a less impressive but consistently available 10 or 20 Mbps to everyone, instead of saying "wooooooo! 1Tbps! oh, there's no way it'll get put out to your area? too bad"
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LNCPapa said:
I don't know if I could turn down 98% uptime 10+mb cable for 99.9% uptime 1.5mb DSL. Don't get me wrong, in my area TW is the worst, but I still put up with them because they offer the best speeds. In some cities they're actually good - too bad mine isn't one of them.
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SSD's will be the only drives that would benfit from these speeds but by the time we'll see these speeds in real-life SSD's will be the "only" choice.
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Well, I have 100Mbps at my home right now.
Hard to believe?
See for yourself:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1155082367.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1153772844.png
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Guys! No one is saying that your home will be equiped with a 1Tbps internet connection in 3 years.... This sort of bandwidth would be what the ISP can provide to various areas, or perhaps certain research colleges would be able to get such massive bandwidth. But with modern PCs this sort of speed wouldn't even mean anything. RAM can write at what? 17GBps is the fastest number I've seen and that is much more expensive, high performance, and uncommon than what most people's pcs use. So an individual user today with a $5000 or more pc could theoretically use up to 143Gbps for streaming media, but definately not 1Tbps. Even a fast SSD writes at around 500-600MBps, so for downloading files even 5Gbps is hugely overkill for almost any home user. And that is for those using very fast SSDs which can cost $500-$600 by themselves, which is more than most users want to pay for an entire system. So practically, it will be years and years before computing technology could benefit from 1Tbps, but if all storage was in the cloud somehow and could be transfered to your computer at insane rates, you may be able to use 100Gbps connection, meaning a large bluray movie would buffer in 3 seconds assuming you had at least 40GB of RAM installed.... Give it 10 years and who knows, but 3? Not even practical for an individual. Thus entire areas will be sharing such bandwidth for now.
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