Siemens AG breaks network speed record
Data speed records are falling left and right these days but there doesn't seem to be any signs of the madness letting up, with Reuters reporting today that Siemens AG has joined the party, smashing the previous record for transmission rates over a single fiber channel using "exclusively electrical means." They maxed out at a speed of 107 gigibits per second before running out of steam -- that's reportedly a full 2.5 times faster than the previous record for a single fiber channel. What's more, they did it outside of the laboratory, using an existing a 100 mile-long fiber optic route in the U.S. According to Siemens, this record is particularly significant as it will reduce the need to split signals into a number lower data-rate channels in order to avoid bottlenecks, ultimately resulting in networks that are both faster and cheaper for customers. It looks like we'll still have to wait a while before we can take advantage of the speedy new technology, however, with the first prototype products based on it still a few years away.[Via Reuters/Yahoo News]
Filed under: Networking
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
enemes @ Dec 20th 2006 7:46PM
fiber channel? I suppose they mean optical fiber? Fiber channel is a SAN protocol.
Thomas Bags @ Dec 20th 2006 8:28PM
"siemen" and the internet were always meant to be together
Billy Bob @ Dec 20th 2006 8:34PM
i crack up whenever i hear the company name siemens
sorry
just thought id put that out there
But seriously, I think this is great. This looks like it has a high chance of "going public" as opposed a lot of the other projects we've seen, as it was done with regular, already-deployed optical fiber and not in the lab. I really hope this means I can stop paying Ameritech $25 a month for 1.5 Mbps DSL
Hold on.
That means this is
NEARLY 100,000 TIMES FASTER THAN MY CURRENT CONNECTION!!!
Holy bittorrent downloads, Batman!
LukeA @ Dec 20th 2006 9:52PM
It's impressive that they got that speed over 100 mi, as opposed to lab records, which are over a distance of about 5 feet.
Kevin @ Dec 21st 2006 1:25AM
Ever the pessimist, I realize that hard drive write speeds will not be as fast as the connection. So it's useless... for now.
Keaton @ Dec 21st 2006 2:58AM
WOW! Think of the processing power on each end of that cable...
The memory bandwidth for a Core 2 Duo is about 12.8 Gbps...
You need about eight-ish Core 2 Duo's on both ends just to move that much data... Thats insane! Whats the world coming to?
danno @ Dec 22nd 2006 12:20PM
What's a 'gigibit'? Is this some new advance over traditional gigabit speeds?
And Siemens better get in the game... no one wants their big telephony switches anymore... way too oldschool. Siemens needed a tech breakthrough to show they're still around... I guess this was it.
Now all they has to do is build an entire product around this technology, market and sell it... oh poor Siemens.