“Twisted” Fiber Optic Light Breakthrough Could Make Internet 100 Times Faster

Megalith

Megalith

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Researchers in the US had figured out how to carry additional information along a fiber optic cable by twisting the light into a spiral, but there was one problem: the detector required to read this information was “the size of a dining table.” Australia’s RMIT University has reportedly solved that problem with a new detector that is only the width of a human hair.

“We could produce the first chip that could detect this twisting and display it for mobile application,” Gu said. By twisting light into a spiral, engineers effectively create a third dimension for light to carry information: the level of orbital angular momentum, or spin. “It’s like DNA, if you look at the double helix spiral,” said Min Gu from RMIT University. “The more you can use angular momentum the more information you can carry.”
 
dR.Jester said:
and it comes with a 300GB data cap
Click to expand...
pfft...
like ATT/Comcast/Verizon/<insert legacy crap here> would not sue any provider into the ground for even trying to install something like this right now...... granted we are still YEARS away from this being commercially viable anyway.... so, that could change...


i see this only being of interest to muni operations and smaller regional/statewide operations as far as end user service providers.
backbones however might be pretty interested in pushing this out quickly.
 
Any long distance or backbone lines would likely benefit if the 100x increase in bandwidth was there. That's a rather massive volume of fiber.
 
How does this compare to DWDM which is already in use and can put tens of many different wavelengths of light down a single fiber?
 
pclov3r said:
How does this compare to DWDM which is already in use and can put tens of many different wavelengths of light down a single fiber?
Click to expand...
As I understand, it should in theory stack. This technique seems to be based on the angle of entry/exit to put it simply. Fire a laser into the fiber at +/-15/30/45 degrees etc. Then account for attenuation based on high angles having to travel further and/or exiting in opposite directions as opposed to a simple on/off wavelength. Then add a 3rd dimension as a cylindrical cable.
 
Today it is the size of a dining table.

Tomorrow it will be the size of a briefcase.

The day after, it will fit in your hand.
 
The bottle neck isn't the fiber, it's the switching. Rolling out fiber is simple in comparison to switching the data. Hell, there's still dark fiber all over the place.
 
dR.Jester said:
and it comes with a 300GB data cap
Click to expand...
Its all about competition, At&T now has fiber in my neoghbirhood, and the 1000 Mbps line comes with no caps, if you get a 300Mbps line it does have a 1TB cap but it used to be smaller. Now Comcast offers gigabit service her for the same cost as AT&T for 90month but it isnt symmetrical with 35Mbps upload LOLoLOl
 
OHH Boy I can't wait for this to get rolled out to 2 cities on the west coast while the rest of the country still has copper and 3g. YAY for tech that will be replaced by something better before it ever reaches 90% of the country/99.999% of the world.
 
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