Alcatel-Lucent blows past data transmission record: 25.6Tbps

Data transmission records were just made to be shattered, as we've seen the benchmark go from 2.56- to 14- and now to 25.6-terabits per second within a year (and five days, but who's counting?). The momentary record holder this time around is Alcatel-Lucent, which "successfully transmitted a world record 25.6Tbps of optical data over a single fiber strand' using 160 WDM channels. In case you were wondering, that's enough speed to send about 600 DVDs worth of information to your buddy in one single second, after which you'd likely destroy any and all functionality his / her computer previously had before the bombardment. Now, what's it cost to run one or two of these pipes to Sealand?

[Karl L. Gechlik @ Mar 29th 2007 7:13AM]

That is amazing and blowing my fios out of the water. When is it coming to NYC and how much is it going to cost?

Where are the test locations?

[Nelson @ Mar 29th 2007 7:28AM]

"that's enough speed to send about 600 DVDs worth of information to your buddy in one single second"

Is there a hard drive out there that could write all that info in one second? That's a pretty large buffer...

[Yorrik @ Mar 29th 2007 7:56AM]

well...
the fastes ram doesn't even go that fast..

[J @ Mar 29th 2007 8:30AM]

Too bad the highest standard is OC-768 at 40 Gbps, until the IEEE gets moving and goes for 100 GigEthernet.

[os10 @ Mar 29th 2007 8:49AM]

That would be around 160Gb/second per DWDM channel... pretty impressive considering 10Gb/s channels (OC192) are the high end at most telcos' networks right now. Of course, getting something like this to work in the field is a whole different story, limited by the quality of fiber in use on most fiber routes. Could be a long while.

[teodoro @ Mar 29th 2007 9:24AM]

After reading this post, I was concerned that it was a short distance feat. However, the article says "The experimental system transmitted 25.6Tbit/s of data through three 80-km spans."

Wow. That's all i gotta say.

[Mark @ Mar 29th 2007 9:49AM]

They pushed 25 Terabits of data per second. Which is 3 TBytes of data in a second. I wonder what "data" they were pushing... all their porn collections combined possibly?

[F @ Mar 29th 2007 10:00AM]

Fine, but what speed were (will be?) NOMAD and V'Ger using?

[Timerider @ Mar 29th 2007 11:38AM]

And I still can't get high-speed internet.

[SB @ Mar 29th 2007 12:40PM]

Will this be available on the iPhone?

Mark, you beat me to the PrOn joke!

[Denis @ Mar 29th 2007 12:53PM]

Isn't that ~the size of all the internets combined?

[kynetx @ Mar 29th 2007 6:28PM]

I wonder how they plan on repeating the signal. Will they break it out and regen it or run it through an EDFA?