Researchers at the University of London in the United Kingdom have achieved the world’s fastest internet data transmission rate of an astonishing 178 terabits per second. This speed is almost twice that of any system used anywhere in the world currently.
The previous record for the fastest internet in the world was held by scientists at Japan’s National Institute for Communications Technology with a speed of 172 Terabits per second.
Would you believe that this internet speed is so high that one could download the entire Netflix library in a mere second! And, it would take less than an hour to download the massive amount of data that made up the world’s first image of a black hole!!
According to the scientists, this speed is also close to theoretical limit of data transmission that was postulated by Claude Shannon, the American mathematician widely considered the ‘Father of Information Technology’, in 1949.
This new record was published in a research paper in the journal IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.
This fast speed was achieved by a new technique: transmitting the data through a much diverse and wide range of colours of light, or wavelengths, than is used in the conventional optical fibre. The researchers were further able to manipulate each individual wavelength by integrating various amplifier technologies and making the most use of properties of light that transmitted the data.
The researchers also believe that with the increase in the amount of data used, high speed internet will be needed. Interestingly, and this new technology would be easy and cost effective to adapt to the current infrastructure.
“While current state-of-the-art cloud data-centre interconnections are capable of transporting up to 35 terabits a second, we are working with new technologies that utilise more efficiently the existing infrastructure,” said lead author Lidia Galdino, a Lecturer at UCL and a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow.
Isn’t this an interesting innovation that could change the way the internet is used? Please let us know your views in the comments section below.
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