In a bid to set another level of standard for the Internet, the University College London has set a new World Record for the Fastest Internet that can download 178 Terabits of data in just one second. That is equal to 178,000,000 megabits of data.
Earlier this record was hold in together by the Monash, Swinburne, and RMIT universities in Australia. They set the world record at 44.2 Terabits per second. Now, comparing the existing with the same, you can see the existing record is approximately 4 times more than the former one.
So, how does University College of London able to achieve this Internet Speed. Well, we should appreciate Dr. Lidia Galdino from the Royal Academy of Engineering who able to achieve this data transmission rate in co-ordination with two companies named Xtera and Kiddi Research. Lead Author, Dr. Galdino is a Lecturer at University College London and a fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering Research.
Now, coming to the actual work, they said, they achieve the same by using much wider range of colours of light and wavelength than is typically used in optical fibres. Right now, Optical Fibre network uses 4.5THz to 9THz of spectrum bandwidth that varies from limited to commercial use. But, here, Dr. Lidia said they used 16.8THz of spectrum bandwidth.
In order to achieve this speed, Dr. Lidia and her team used different amplifier technologies to boost the signal, also, develops new Geometric Shaping Constellations to influence individual wavelength. Those of you who don’t know, Geometric Shaping Constellations is an energy efficiency enhancement method for digital signal modulation. With this method we optimize the brightness and polarization properties of light.
Dr. Lidia said, we can implement this new technology (to achieve 178Tbps Internet Connection) on the existing network infrastructure. For that we have to upgrade the amplifiers that we right now are using in the optical fibre routes. We just have to assemble the upgraded amplifiers at every 40-100 km of intervals.
With this Internet Speed (178Tbps), the University College London has said, they can download the entire Netflix Library in just a second. However, it would take an hour or something to download the data of world’s first image of black hole.
Fun Fact: It is said, the data of world’s first image of black hole is stored on half a ton of hard drives.