Data transmission rates are hitting ludicrous speeds in the lab
Imagine a world without buffering, a world where downloading HD movies takes less than one second, a world where your favorite web pages load before you even take your finger off the enter button. Don’t fret, we’re getting closer.
Researchers at the Optical Network Group at University College London published a study saying they have achieved a data transmission rate of 1.125 terabits per second, which is an absolutely insane amount of data. It also happens break the record for highest rate of data received by a single receiver.
Senior research associate Robert Maher told Mashable in an email that this transmission rate could send/receive the entire Game of Thrones TV series in less than a second.
“The entire five-season box set has a file size of 120 GB in HD,” Maher said. “As there are eight bits in a byte, you could transmit/receive this box set in just one second if the download rate was 960 Gbps.”
To compare, Maher said state-of-the-art commercial systems can usually receive rates around 100 Gbps, whereas the average broadband rate in the U.S. is 11.7 Mbps, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet Report. The UCL team’s record is over 100,000 times faster than the rate of your average broadband connection The UCL team’s record is over 100,000 times faster than the rate of your average broadband connection.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to go out and buy a 1.125 Tbps router anytime soon — the data was sent directly between the transmitter and receiver, so there's no long-range option at this time.
The team achieved the record by combining 15 lower-rate transmitters into a single super channel.
“This super channel is then routed as a single entity,” Maher said. “However, at the receiver, we detect the entire super channel in one go. Using this very high bandwidth receiver, we can record greater amounts of information.”
The team’s work was the result of a five-year collaborative project.
