178 TBs per second: New internet speed world record

Engineers at the University of College London succeeded in achieving the world’s fasted data transmission rate. They gained 178 terabits per second, which is even faster than the previous one. This internet speed is the new world record. This new record, demonstrated in the U.C.L lab, is a fifth faster than the previous world record held by a team in Japan.

The demand for broadband communication services has increased, with some operators experiencing almost sixty percent increase in internet traffic. In this unprecedented situation, the resilience and capability of broadband networks have become even more critical.

High Speed

The team of engineers leads by Dr. Lidia Galdino worked with Xtera and KDDI Research companies. With the speed of 178,000,000 MBs per second, it would be possible to download the complete Netflix library data in less than a second.

Technology

To achieve the record, which is double of any system currently deployed in the world, the transmission of data carried out through a much more comprehensive range of colors of light, or wavelengths, than is typically used in optical fiber.

The team of researchers combined different amplifier technologies needed to boost the signal power over this wider bandwidth and maximized speed by developing new Geometric Shaping (G.S) constellations, manipulating the properties of each wavelength. A recent paper in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters has published this work.

Benefits

The advantage of this new technique is that it can be installed on existing infrastructure cost-effectively, by upgrading the amplifiers, located on optical fiber routes at 40-100km intervals. (Upgradation of an amplifier would cost £16,000, whereas installing new optical fibers, cost up to £450,000 per kilometer.)

Due to this high speed, you can download the world’s first image of the black hole within an hour. This speed is close to the theoretical limit of data transmission determined by American mathematician Claude Shannon in 1949.

Team Members Comments

Dr. Galdino said:

“Current state-of-the-art cloud data-center interconnections are capable of transporting up to 35 terabits a second. We are working with new technologies that utilize the existing infrastructure more efficiently, making better use of optical fiber bandwidth and enabling a world record transmission rate of 178 terabits a second.”

Dr. Galdino added:

“Internet traffic has increased exponentially over the last ten years, and this whole growth in data demand is related to the cost per bit going down. The development of new technologies is crucial to maintaining this trend towards lower costs while meeting future data rate demands that will continue to increase, with as yet unthought-of applications that will transform people’s lives.”