New record set for fastest data transmission -- 2.56 terabits a second

In the never ending search for better data transmission over the fiber optic backbones that hold our Internet together, Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications has teamed with Fujitsu to see how much data they could squeeze through one of those glass pipes. The results sure look good; by pumping light at various wavelengths they managed to squeeze 60 DVDs worth of data a second over a 100 mile link. The new 2.56tbps records smashes the old 1.28tbps record, and reminds us once again how much our cable connection really sucks.

[jobless @ Mar 24th 2006 11:00PM]

And I'm still stuck at 42kbs

[vIC @ Mar 24th 2006 11:02PM]

DAMN,

thats fast !!!

i hate my 56k :(

heh jk i have 1024

[Slash @ Mar 24th 2006 11:19PM]

i'm on 256k still

yes, i cry myself to sleep everynight.

[Jonathan Keim @ Mar 24th 2006 11:27PM]

That's so sadd :(. I have peaceful dreams of my days with my 5 mbps cable service :D

[invaderluj @ Mar 24th 2006 11:36PM]

i remember the days of the 28.8k connection...just wait for the text page to load

[klo @ Mar 24th 2006 11:51PM]

It's good to hear they are doing such research, but I just don't see a day where home users will get (or need) this kind of bandwidth - but then again, the article did say this research is for fiber-optic backbones.

[Kazuko @ Mar 24th 2006 11:58PM]

Damn that's fast. I'm stuck with 6mb/sec ( TT __ TT )

[Captain Obvious @ Mar 24th 2006 11:58PM]

Oh sure this might quench my thirst for pr0n at first...

[crysalis @ Mar 25th 2006 12:16AM]

56k lol, my basic gprs cell phone is nearly 56k.. i use it for webbrowsing all the time..

here at home i have a 100 mbps connection :)

[Terry @ Mar 25th 2006 12:23AM]

I remember my 300bps modem back in the late 70s

Which now reminds me of my 30 characters per second dot matrix terminal .. no CRT in those days for me.

#5 Home users adicted to p0rn can never get enough bandwidth. They can get live holographic p0rn at those speeds.

[chuuchdizzle @ Mar 25th 2006 12:47AM]

someday we will indeed need that kind of speed

dial-up users are commiting suicide everywhere

[PhilJ @ Mar 25th 2006 1:16AM]

Nuts to you young'uns. I remember those tasty couplers, which got 300 baud on a good day. Then again, I never did use them much at all...

Of course, who could forget the sheer joy of the Volks modems with the AutoAnswer switch on 'em? :)

[Max @ Mar 25th 2006 1:26AM]

Thats really amazing, I wonder how much that would cost to impliment in mainstream broadband access. It might use the same exsisting fiber optics cables. Considering its just uses different fequencies and whatever of light. However switch boards and analog devices would definatly bottle neck those speeds, So i'm thinking it might be a while till we get something like this.

[Tommy @ Mar 25th 2006 2:14AM]

Transmission is gay. Just like you. Send me a free phone. I really need it. now. ask my homeboy dre. He has a php. I bet you transmission boys don't. Forget 256K I ghot 12 in the bank.

[Tommy @ Mar 25th 2006 2:15AM]

PS the guy above me is drunk

[Matt @ Mar 25th 2006 3:33AM]

I'm stuck with 1mb, and thats the most I can get because I live in an old house with an old crappy phoneline :(

[Nick @ Mar 25th 2006 4:28AM]

Yeah, but there'll still be people who complain that it took 5 nanoseconds to get their stuff...

Seriously, when are they going to be able to viably market this? Once they do, say goodbye to computing as we know it. Back to the dummy terminal (in each home) / smart client (the servers) architecture. We won't have computers in our homes, we'll own space and memory on another computer elsewhere. Need more? No problem, you've just been upgraded. Want the latest software/movies/music/etc? Ok, you have it now.

Bring it on!!!

[zs450 @ Mar 25th 2006 5:19AM]

You know, people are saying, "There is no market for this". It's going to be years before a home solution is marketed for something this fast, but, it will eventually happen. If you read the article, it says that it's being looked at to upgrade the BACKBONE. I hate to tell you, but, if you're sitting at home typing, you're not a part of the backbone so no one expects you to have a terrabyte or two connection.

Remember when 56K was Blazing fast and if you had a Pentium, you would NEVER need to upgrade? How many of us had a 14.4 modem and thought that it was top of the line at one time (hands up) Who has ever said, "There's no need for a terrabyte of hard drive space, you'll never fill it?" (guilty again, but I have 1.5 terrabytes of data now) The point is, there will one day be a market and there will be a day when these speeds are running to your door. Just think, if the holographic discs are perfected and marketed as primary drives soon, application speed will be nothing to tackle so computers will be faster and we the web surfers will become even more impaitent than we already are.

[paris @ Mar 25th 2006 5:45AM]

in order for us to have such connections then the backbone must have even higher transfer rates. So its going to be a long time before our homes get close to these rates.

If I'm right Korea actually has fibre optics running straight to homes and they get 100Mbits connections.

[heyhow @ Mar 25th 2006 6:45AM]

hm lol, thats really good for a smooth lag free onlinegaming experience ;)

[cobalt60 @ Mar 25th 2006 7:37AM]

Lag-free? Hell, at that speed, you're shots will be there before you actually fire them!

[Maxwell @ Mar 25th 2006 9:20AM]

If they're sending and receiving at that speed, the hardware they're using must be amazing as well. Who knows of a hard drive that can write even a Gb in a second?

I guess they must be using some super duper fast latency high capacity memory or something.

Pretty awesome, but still, by that time we'll be in the movies we're watching playing the lead role and the imagery pumped to our brains eye sensors. I guess you'd need a lot of info to keep that stuff going.

I'm scared.

[Kathryn @ Mar 25th 2006 9:36AM]

@#17

Yes. I'm in a fairly new apartment in S. Korea and I have a 100 mbps connection.

It'll suck when I move back home to the US :)

[Germ @ Mar 25th 2006 10:38AM]

WOW! That's fast! I don't see the need for an internet connection that fast. I'm still stuck on 56k. Has anyone heard of the 6 (or something) PETAbyte disc? They say it will sell for about $700 usd. I don't know how you can get that much info on a disc! CRAZY!

[Alexandre Donzel @ Mar 25th 2006 12:06PM]

now we'll get streaming HDTV and stuff, real QUALITY sound, not supercompressed crap. with the next gen of HDD (solid-state, etc...) coming out, and a new better backbone for the internet, 56k will be just an incalculably low fraction of your connexion. 100Mbps will make it into the copper wire and well all be set till sby comes with HgTV (Holographic TV), at which point well be screwad and have to reinvent PCs and the internet all over again...

[yoyoyoyo @ Mar 25th 2006 12:19PM]

well, i got
1x 720 k/s dsl flatrate
(currently capped at 360 k/s)
and
1x UMTS flatrate (40 k/s) for my cellphone
which i havent used much lately

i hope that some time in 8 years
tv companies switch over to IPtv that way our internet will become much faster.

[monsoondawn @ Mar 25th 2006 12:24PM]

To hell with transmitting porn videos and pictures! It is now possible to download the entire genetic sequence of your favorite pornstar in just seconds.

[bufbarnaby @ Mar 25th 2006 3:23PM]

Who cares ? Servers can`t give us pages anywhere near that fast.

[rmjb @ Mar 25th 2006 4:00PM]

I'll take two please.

[Alan @ Mar 25th 2006 4:53PM]

just when i thought my 10mbit was utilizing a decent chunk.

[Amidee @ Mar 25th 2006 5:13PM]

Here in Italy we have the very first European fiber connection for common people :D (with Fastweb, part of E.Biscom company)
I'm running with a 10 mbps connection right now, but I could unlock it to 100 mps with no effort... but it's pretty illegal :D

still pretty far from 2.5 tbps :D

[thomas_h @ Mar 25th 2006 5:35PM]

""If they're sending and receiving at that speed, the hardware they're using must be amazing as well. Who knows of a hard drive that can write even a Gb in a second?

I guess they must be using some super duper fast latency high capacity memory or something.

Pretty awesome, but still, by that time we'll be in the movies we're watching playing the lead role and the imagery pumped to our brains eye sensors. I guess you'd need a lot of info to keep that stuff going.

I'm scared.""


Two words: the matrix.. i really think that sometime in the future we'll be able to plug in to games that look perfectly real and seem perfectly real, and we can do whatever we want. would be awesome if you ask me, but it could be horrible too... imagine a vr fps that looks perfectly real.

[Timerider @ Mar 25th 2006 5:54PM]

"The new 2.56tbps records smashes the old 1.28tbps record, and reminds us once again how much our cable connection really sucks."

Oh boo hoo, i have dialup because the !#$@%*@ phone company won't let us get DSL, no one will. I have no cable, no satellite, no hi-speed internet on my 400Mhz computer, and the TV reception on my 25+ year old TV sucks. Don't complain to me.

[Raymond @ Mar 25th 2006 8:13PM]

I'm rollin 54.0Mbpd, which is up from 18 this morning. I taped bunny ear antanaes to my wireless transmitter. ;)

[daniel @ Mar 25th 2006 8:48PM]

quoting #33:
"I'm rollin 54.0Mbpd"

wow 54 megabits per day make about 606 kilobits per second! thats more than i have (512kbps) o.O
i had never heard of hat kind of unit before though...

[daniel @ Mar 25th 2006 8:56PM]

oops, my bad.
that would make 655.36 Mbps...

-daniel

[eriko @ Mar 25th 2006 9:57PM]

hey, i live in indonesia and my cable internet speed is only 128bps shared for equal to US$55/month!! how suck is that!!

[joe soko @ Mar 25th 2006 11:20PM]

Some at the mpaa has just crapped in their pants!

[Sane Scientist @ Mar 26th 2006 12:22AM]

#26, nice idea, but your arithmetic is faulty. The human genome is only 3 billion base pairs, each equal to 2 bits, for 6Gb. At 3Tb/sec that makes for 2 milliseconds. Happy cloning.

[Sangenfant @ Mar 26th 2006 3:41AM]

But with the 2 billion base pairs, they are not always necessarily 1's and 0's (remember the lesson we learned from Gattaca?) So to resolve that issue, should we not first investigate the possibility of a system that is not binary? Possibly a base 3 or 4 calculation system? I know the falls along the lines of a MO(dulator)DEM(odulator) but wouldn't this type of system increase calculation speeds for systems? Is it possible even? Where there's a will, there's a way, especially to make things faster.

[Joseph Bridges @ Mar 26th 2006 11:08AM]

Let's talk fast data transfer. I just heard from God on the subject. He says He knew/knows/is knowing/will know every existing bit of information from the beginning to the end, from beyond the ends of the Universe as we perceive it at our best moments to the same, with no detail excluded. Also, He not only instantly knew your reaction to this, He knew what you would feel/think/sense/do before He created all this. The upside? He still wants to be your Friend, and He's still waiting for an answer from you on that.

Have your best day ever today.

[nickb834 @ Mar 26th 2006 11:55AM]

"the fastest high-speed links currently carry data at a maximum 40 Gbit/s"

Sorry but this is wrong, 40Gbit/s was surpassed a long long time ago.

Marconi Communications manufactures and sells DWDM equipment (Dense wave division multiplexing) which in essance puts 80 wavelengths of light each carrying 10Gbit/s down one fibre, so 80 x 10Gbit/s equals 800Gbit's, so 20 times faster than what this article would have you beleive.

This equipment - known as "PLT80" which means "photonics line terminal 80 wavelengths", has been sold and used in the UK and Europe for the last 5 years - British telecom has them, as does Cable & Wireless (The part that was formerly Energis).

None the less, 2.5 Tereabits is not to be sniffed at, it's just 3 times faster than what is currently being sold and manufactured NOT 50 odd times faster!

[glacia00 @ Mar 26th 2006 12:32PM]

""If they're sending and receiving at that speed, the hardware they're using must be amazing as well. Who knows of a hard drive that can write even a Gb in a second?""

They're not sending data to a hard drive. Like most optical testing the optical data is likely going into an O/E converter then into a BERT

Wish I could see more of their setup. But they said "various Wavelengths" which tells me WDM. So there are multiple signals being multiplexed onto one fiber. I'm wondering what the data-rates of the individual signals are.

There are over 50 C-Band channels for DWDM so the individual data-rates are 2.56tbps divided by X. (probably less than 50 but several)

The impressive thing for me is the 100 miles (odd that it's speced in miles - never seen that before) But at any rate it's hard sometimes to get even 2.5GB/s to go that far (because of Chirp and Chromatic Dispersion problems not power.)


(O/E = optical to electrical, BERT = Bit Error Rate Tester, (D)WDM = (Dense) Wavelength Division Multiplexing)

[GTgadget @ Mar 26th 2006 12:37PM]

Ah, memories...

2400 baud...cool, I'm online

14.4K...holy hell, that's fast!

56K...can you say bitchin'?! Too bad it's the regulated max. Maybe I can set up a trust fund for ISDN in the future.

College 10baseT straight into the backbone...nirvana!

DSL/cable...so THAT's why people hate Flash & PDFs! Hmmmm, maybe I should have suffered through grad school and on-campus housing.

[Trent @ Mar 26th 2006 1:43PM]

At 2.56 TBps, they surely had to have had either testing equipment, or really super-fast PCs to even think of producing that much data to send over a line.

With the backbone in american slowly being switched to DWDM/Fiber, expect Verizon's FTTP project to hit almost all homes within half a decade. Within half a century, or possibly sooner, also expect computers to get a new backbone of their own : light. Researchers are trying to create a personal computer that uses light as its bus transmission media rather than electrical traces. When that happens, we'll be able to have rates of terrabytes at the home.

Holy cow...

[Andrew @ Mar 26th 2006 3:12PM]

(*cries and realizes that this wont happen for a long time, and is still stuck on 3mb cable...)

(*cheers up at the fact that I will be able to use 100bmit connection at Ohio State University soon)

[glacia00 @ Mar 27th 2006 1:13AM]

There wasn't a computer at all in this experiment. There is a piece of equipment (Bit Error Rate Tester) that generates the data and receives the data. No hard drive, no computer, no DVDs.

Here's the data path...

BERT - Optical Transceiver(s) - 100 miles o' fiber (the spool visible on their bench) - Back to an O/E or the same Transceiver(s)- Back into the BERT.

[IAM @ Apr 11th 2006 12:39AM]

Finally, my time won't be wasted. I can finally work with a computer that can keep up with me.

[Garth Algar @ May 25th 2007 12:46PM]

The young guy at the front is watching porn, the old guy at the back is ashamed.