Broadband is not a speed.
Researchers unlock fiber optic connection 1.2 million times faster than broadband
Submitted 6 months ago by cows_are_underrated@feddit.de to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.popsci.com/technology/fiber-optic-wavelength-record/
Comments
billwashere@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Entropywins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Do you know how fast you were going?
Faster than broadband…
pirat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
according to the FTC or FCC whichever one it was recently raised the defined speed of a broadband connection.
It’s not symmetrical yet though. Which is weird.
KamikazeRusher@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It’s not symmetrical yet though. Which is weird.
Eh, I would say it’s to be expected. A lot of infrastructure still relies on coax/DOCSIS which has its limitations in comparison to an all-fiber backbone. (This post has some good explanations.) However it wouldn’t surprise me if some ISPs argue that “nobody needs that much uplink” and “it helps restrict piracy” when really it’s just them holding out against performing upgrades.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There are limitations to the technology, similar to saying 3 times faster than sound.
Also broadband as a regulated term would have speeds tied to that definition.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Distances though? I’ve seen similar breakthroughs in the past but it was only good for networking within the same room.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s optical fiber so it’s good for miles. Unlikely to be at home for decades but telcos will use it for connecting networks.
credo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Note they did not say 1.2 million times faster than fiber. Instead they compared it to the broadband definition; an obvious choice of clickbait terminology.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 6 months ago
It’s optical fiber so it’s good for miles.
OM1 through OM4 have full rate distances of less than 800 meters.
Yes there is faster stuff that goes for literal miles but saying that optical fiber can always go mile is incorrect.
blarth@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
It’s much more than just 100Gb/s.
A single fiber can carry over 90 channels of 400G each. The public is mislead by articles like this. It’s like saying that scientists have figured out how to deliver the power of the sun, but that technology would be reserved for the power company’s generation facilities, not your house.
AstralPath@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Its not stupid at all. “Broadband” speed is a term that laypeople across the country can at least conceptualize. Articles like this aren’t necessarily written exclusively for industry folks. If the population can’t relate to the information well, how can they hope to pressure telcos for better services?
9point6@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I wonder what non-telco applications will use this
I wonder if something like a sport stadium has video requirements that would get close with HFR 8K video?
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
And 1.2 million times less likely to be available to the public
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Also 1.2 million times less likely to leave the research stadium because even if this is true (very big if already) it’s still “new and exciting and revolutionary improvement #3626462” this week alone. Revolutionary new battery tech comes out twice a week if you believe the pop sci tech sites, it’s 99.9% crap
frezik@midwest.social 6 months ago
Battery advancements aren’t crap. We’ve gotten 5-8% improvement in capacity per year, which compounds to a doubling every 10 to 15 years. Every advancement covered by over sensationalized pop sci articles you’ve ever heard has contributed to that. It’s important not to let sensationalism make you jaded to actual advancements.
Now, as for broadband, we haven’t pushed out the technologies to the last mile that we already have. However, this sort of thing is useful for the backbone and universities. Universities sometimes have to transfer massive amounts of data, and some of the most efficient ways to do that are a van full of hard drives.
n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Stuff like this is a bit more believable. Still will be more than a decade before we will see any benefit. First all of the sea cables would get the upgrade, then private companies (banks mainly), then governments (military and such), ISPs will prolly not touch it for as long as possible till governments force em.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
No normal consumer user would have any reasonable use case for this kind of bandwidth.
This is data center and backbone network stuff.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
ultimately the end consumer is going to run their connection through it SOMEWHERE, or something very similar more than likely.
It’s not going to be FTTH levels of connectivity, but interconnect to ISP it very well could be.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Maybe so. Would sure be nice to have that kind of breathing room though
Dasnap@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Cool I’ll be able to download CoD in just a few hours.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s compared to the average broaband speed in the UK, so it’s not quite as exciting as it might sound …
SpeziSuchtel@feddit.de 6 months ago
So it’s barely faster than my phones internet when I’m traveling through nature.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 6 months ago
With data caps, you can now go over your limit 1.2 billion times faster!
Pietrasagh@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Source article is here aston.ac.uk/…/aston-university-researchers-send-d…
One originally linked is re-post of re-post.
thbb@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I remember the early 90’s when fiber connection was being developed in research centers.
Researchers had found a way to transmit all of a country’s phone calls’ bandwidth through a simple fiber cable. Then, they wondered: what could we use this for?
This was a few years before the explosion of the internet…
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
wrekone@lemmyf.uk 6 months ago
With further refinement and scaling, internet providers could ramp up standard speeds without overhauling current fiber optic infrastructures.
Don’t worry. They’ll find some way to use this to justify massive rate increases.
tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
We must make ISPs a public service owned by the people. Who can argue that internet isn’t essential to being a regular member of society? These companies rob us and use their monopolies to manipulate us.
klef25@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wow! That site sucks on mobile.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 6 months ago
PopSci in general has seen better days. I tried subscribing again to their physical magazines and it’s just a mess… There were more cigarette ads than interesting articles.
acetanilide@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They want you to try the updated fiber optic connection
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Works fine on mine
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
remember kids, commit arson against your local ISP, and you will only be arrested for probably 20 years.
humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I’m highly suspicious about group dispersion over long distances. Today’s infrastructure was developed for a certain range of frequencies. Broading it right away wouldn’t be applicable that easy - we would need to introduce error correction which compromises the speed multiplier.
Too lazy to get the original paper though
blarth@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
We already have transceivers that perform forward error correction. That technology is a decade+ old.
humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
It is, but it compromises the speed exponentially with length/broadening
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
The zero dispersion wavelength of G.652.D fiber is between 1302 nm and 1322 nm, in the O-band, whereas typical current DWDM systems operate in the range of 1528.38 to 1563.86nm, in the C-band. Group dispersion is therefore lower in the shorter wavelength E-band and S-band compared to the C-band.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
First of all some corrections:
By constructing a device called an optical processor, however, researchers could access the never-before-used E- and S-bands.
It’s called an amplifier not processor, the Aston University page has it correct. And at least the S-band has seen plenty of use in ordinary CWDM systems, just not amplified. We have at least 20 operational S-band links at 1470 and 1490 nm in our backbone right now. The E-band maybe less so, because the optical absorption peak of water in conventional fiber sits somewhere in the middle of it. You could use it with low water peak fiber, but for most people it hasn’t been attractive trying to rent spans of only the correct type of fiber.
the E-band, which sits adjacent to the C-band in the electromagnetic spectrum
No, it does not, the S-band is between them. It goes O-band, E-band, S-band, C-band, L-band, for “original” and “extended” on the left side, and “conventional”, flanked by “short” and “long” on the right side.
Now to the actual meat: This is a cool material science achievement. However in my professional opinion this is not going to matter much for conventional terrestrial data networks. We already have the option of adding more spectrum to current C-band deployments in our networks, by using filters and additional L-band amplifiers. But I am not aware of any network around ours (AS559) that actually did so. Because fundamentally the question is this:
Which is cheaper:
- renting a second pair of fiber in an existing cable, and deploying the usual C-band equipment on the second pair,
- keeping just one pair, and deploying filters and the more expensive, rarer L-band equipment, or
- keeping just one pair, and using the available C-band spectrum more efficiently with incremental upgrades to new optics?
Currently, for us, there is enough spectrum still open in the C-band. And our hardware supplier is only just starting to introduce some L-band equipment. I’m currently leaning towards renting another pair being cheaper if we ever get there, but that really depends on where the big buying volume of the market will move.
Now let’s say people do end up extending to the L-band. Even then I’m not so sure that extending into the E- and S- bands as the next further step is going to be even equally attractive, for the simple reason that attenuation is much lower at the C-band and L-band wavelengths.
Maybe for subsea cables the economics shake out differently, but the way I understand their primary engineering constraint is getting enough power for amplifiers to the middle of the ocean, so maybe more amps, and higher attenuation, is not their favourite thing to develop towards either. This is hearsay though, I am not very familiar with their world.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 6 months ago
Faster or more bandwith?
MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
More bandwidth. The physical Bit already travels at the speed of light inside the cables
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
The transiever and network processing stack at some latency as well.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Yes
SereneHurricane@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
My docter said i needed more fiber.
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Its a shame i dont have an ethernet cable that fast or a motherboard with a network interface capable of that speed.
Great if i can get faster fibre into my home but my internal infrastructure is not up to the task. This wont be in the home until we can use fibre cables like we currently use ethernet cables.
Or is there some other tech that would replace ethernet that would handle those speeds. Also whats my wrote speed on my ssd?
Yeah i dont know if thisnis a tech thats meant for home, more likely large businesses with lots of devices all fighting for bandwidth.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.de 6 months ago
It will only be used for corporations, but at some point we will also get it for our homes, but not yet. Also Theres still a lot of research to do before this will be used anywhere.
pankkake@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The closest that comes to mind are QSFP cables.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
xfinity will advertise 100 Tbps lines with the abysmal 1.5 TB/mo data cap anyway
wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
100Tbps downloads speeds (5Mbps upload)
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Speeds not guaranteed…
doublejay1999@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Don’t be silly son, the free market will signal there is opportunity and prices will drop and quality will go up.
woodenskewer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
All fed to you on the not updated data line that caps at 800 MBps
floridaman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
I hate Comcast as much as the next guy but I feel like 1.5TB a month would be reasonable. Even at those speeds you probably wouldn’t be downloading more, just downloading whatever you do now but faster.
sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Why the fuck would I want that speed if I can only fully use it for less than a second before hitting the data cap? I’d rather have 100 times less speed with 100 times more cap, so I can actually fully use it however I want.
Also it’s just ridiculous anyway because I don’t even think hard drive write speeds are that fast.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
There shouldn’t be any data caps on wired connections, especially fiber.
repungnant_canary@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Data caps are simply false advertising - if your infrastructure can only handle X Tb/s then sell lower client speeds or implement some clever QoS.
There are plenty of users for whom 1.5TB is quite or very restrictive - multi member households, video/photo editors working with raw data, scientists working with raw data, flatpak users with Nvidia GPU or people that selfhost their data or do frequent backups etc.
With the popularity of WFH and our dependence on online services the internet is virtually as vital as water or electricity, and you wouldn’t want to be restricted to having no electricity until the end of the month just because you used the angle grinder for a few afternoons.
scytale@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I’m on pace for 0.60 TB this month and I’m no heavy user. I only have 1 4k TV and a laptop for work that I use all day. My wife is mostly on her phone but is a heavy TV user in the evening. I can imagine people who download and/or torrent most of the content they consume can easily hit that.
4am@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Florida man fails math, yet sgain
SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Tell that to my (nonexistent) off-site backup.