BC: WHERE'S THE LAST MILE
This is a great development, but will remain
in the 'gee whiz' category unless/until someone
figures out a cheap/ubiquitous/robust last mile
solution .. 56kbs ain't gonna cut it .. and
cable/dsl/wireless have limited markets or technical
constraints ..
Bell Labs says it shatters data delivery record
NEW YORK, March 22 (Reuters) - Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news) said on Friday that it has doubled the distance and the speed at which data can be sent over long-haul telecommunications networks.
The development will eventually make it cheaper for telecommunications service providers to send more data on fiber optic networks over longer distances.
Bell Labs said that, in a demonstration, it sent a massive 2.56 terabits of data per second over a distance of 2,500 miles, the equivalent of sending the contents of 2,560,000 novels every second across the United States.
One terabit is a little over 1 trillion bits of data.
The previous record was 1.6 terabits per second over 1,250 miles, or half the distance.
Bell Labs achieved the 2.56 terabit-per-second speed by sending 40 gigabits-per-second of data over each of 64 separate channels in fiber optic cable, which uses light waves to carry data.
It used dense wave division multiplexing, a technology that allows service providers to push bigger chunks of data onto a single strand of optical fiber.
The capacity and distance improvement was made possible by use of a coding scheme called differential phase shift keying, which Bell Labs has developed for high-capacity communications.
Lucent's current long distance networking product, the LambdaExtreme, cannot support the higher data speeds but a spokesperson said the Murray Hill, New Jersey-based networking company will incorporate the improvements into future products. |
