Researchers Achieve 5TB-Per-Second Fiber-Optic Network Milestone

While you're busy pining away for Google Fiber, a group of researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have been busy putting it to shame. Trumping their last network milestone achieved back in 2009, the group has developed a fiber network that pushes more than 5TB of data per second through a single optical cable.

The network gives users speeds of 43Tbps, which works out to about 5.4TB per second. As the folks at Extreme Tech pointed out, such speeds would allow you to download a 1GB movie in 0.2 milliseconds — or better said, in the blink of an eye.

The university — henceforth called DTU — is notable for many reasons, not the least of which was being the first to exceed the single terabit milestone, something that took place back in 2009. Though hard at work, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology set the latest record back in 2011 at 26 terabits, something that has persisted until now.

The speeds were achieved using a single-laser and single-fiber setup, with multi-core fiber being used to hit the faster speeds. While you won't be seeing these speeds in your home any time soon, it is an important milestone for ushering us closer.

SOURCE: Extreme Tech