Researchers have been able to record the highest internet speed ever recorded in the world — 178 Terabits Per Second
Research led by the Royal Academy of Engineering Researcher Dr Lidia Galdino and Xtera and Kiddi Research have created the fastest Internet connection ever recorded in the world, where the earlier world record was held by a team in Japan.
The data transfer speed is reported to be as high as 178 Tb per second. Which means that the entire Netflix media library can be downloaded in a 20 second or 200 million HD videos can be downloaded in 0.5 seconds or even the entire storage of YouTube can be downloaded in 37 minutes! And wired to your home broadband, the data connection will give you the possibility to download over 220 4K-quality films in a second.
But this technology is far from reaching consumers, nevertheless can be used in laboratories which use many data, which will enable supercomputers to process data to discover or forecast new life-saving medicines.
Dr Galdino added that the system could also pave the way for “to transform people’s life” applications that have not yet been thought out.
Technology is now gradually approaching the theoretical limit of data transmission, as stated by the American mathematician Claude Shannon in 1949.
The new transmission technology is said to be four times faster than the previous record for the fastest data transmission and has twice the capacity of any connection currently in use in the world.
“While 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 more efficiently the existing infrastructure, making better use of optical fiber bandwidth and enabling a world record transmission rate of 178 terabits a second,” said Dr. Lidia Galdino.
Researchers have used optical fiber technology to achieve this unique speed by transmitting data using a wider range of colors than generally used in optical fiber. They could make the best use of the properties of light that transmitted the data by combining different amplitude technologies and enable it to specifically manipulate each wavelength.
The researchers said that adding new amplifiers to the optical fiber optic channels that currently transmit data could upgrade existing technology to make it more affordable. The required installation of the amplifiers to be used on optical fiber routes would cost £ 16,000 to add new amplifiers, compared to £ 450,000 per kilometre which can be costly in order to install new fibers.
“Independent of the COVID-19 crisis, internet traffic has increased exponentially over the last 10 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.” said Dr. Lidia Galdino.
The amount of data transmitted over the Internet is increasing day by day, so it is safe to assume that the need for high speed internet data transmission will soon be met through this new technology. The corona-virus pandemic has forced many people to quarantine at home and to operate remotely and shop online for vital products. In contrast to the outbreak, several businesses reported an rise of 60 per cent in Internet traffic, according to the research team.
