Envisioning an internet that's 100 times faster: we'll take two
Computer Science researchers at MIT have demonstrated a new way of organizing optical networks which could (in most cases) eliminate the need for conversion of the optical signals into electrical ones -- the way that the internet currently functions. Eliminating this extremely inefficient conversion could lead to an internet that is 100 times faster. The new approach, which lead researcher Vincent Chan calls "flow switching," establishes a dedicated path across the network from one point to the other, always in the same direction, eliminating the need for the router to store any data in memory while another conversion completes, and speeding up the whole process considerably. So what's holding us back from getting this super speedy internet in our clutches? Chan says there's no proven demand for internet that's that fast, so there's no real money behind the project. Considering that we'd pay almost any amount of money for such a thing, we find it hard to believe, but come on world: let's do this.
