SantannaSchoolOfAdvancedStudies

Latest

  • Researchers manage 448Gbps on commercial hardware, coming soonish to a trunk near you

    by 
    Tim Stevens
    Tim Stevens
    03.29.2011

    We've seen many a theoretical demonstration of lightning-quick networks, but most use some rather special purpose hardware -- like lasers and such that your average ISP doesn't have hanging around. However, this new benchmark of 448Gbps is a little more impressive because it was achieved on commercial fiber hardware. A few teams of researchers were the ones shoveling the bits, including the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, the National Inter-university Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), and good 'ol Ericsson. It's said to be the world's first transmission line operating at that speed, and what's most impressive is that it'll be tested on further network segments in the coming months ahead of becoming an actual product at some point in the not-too-distant future. Not soon enough.

  • 'World's fastest WiFi' uses 'lasers'

    by 
    Tim Stevens
    Tim Stevens
    09.12.2008

    We love the smell of a "world's fastest" or "world's largest" claim in the morning. This time it's a team of researchers led by Ernesto Ciaramella at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa Italy, saying they've developed the "world's fastest WiFi." Their network beams data at an amazing 1.2Tbps over a few kilometers, more than enough to share your entire Kurosawa collection faster than you can say "Yojimbo." So, performance claims are valid, but we're not sure about that "WiFi" part. Data was transmitted using Free Space Optics (FSO), blinking lasers or LEDs that act like fiber optics without the fiber. This means line-of-sight connections only, so if you get frustrated when concrete walls hamper your WiFi downloads imagine how you'd feel if a little puffy cloud killed all your torrents. So, fastest wireless? Check. Practical solution for high-speed wireless communications? Not so much.