We all love super-fast, smooth internet services, and for the most part, if you live in a city, you would be able to get your hands on a reasonably fast fiber broadband service that gives you 30Mbps bandwidth on maximum in Ethiopia. This can take care of literally all your streaming needs, including streaming HD content on multiple devices. Japan Breaks Internet Speed
Researchers, however, are never satisfied with things being just about good enough, which is why we have laboratories in universities around the world that seek to achieve faster internet speeds than ever seen before. That’s exactly what the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan has now set, scaling up the fastest internet speed record in the world to a whopping 319 Terabits per second.
For this, the team used a 552-channel laser that operates at various wavelengths. An experimental set-up of a recirculating transmission loop that employed two kinds of rare-earth-doped fiber amplifiers. The specialized amplifiers helped boost the range and speed of the internet.
NICT noted that the new results from the record-breaking internet speed test would help build new communication systems that can support the new “bandwidth-hungry services.” The team also said that it would further work to increase the transmission capacity of “low-core-count multi-core fibers and other novel SDM fibers.”.
The new record is 319 terabits per second (Tb/s). That’s double the previous world record for the fastest internet speed and about 7.6 million times faster than the average home internet speed in the U.S. (42 megabits per second).
As mentioned in the research, the NICT team recorded a 319 terabits per second (Tb/s) speed for data transfer over a distance of approximately 3,000 kilometers. To put the new speed into perspective, know that the old record for the fastest data transfer was held at 178 Tb/s. The new technology beats the old internet speeds by using 4-core optical fiber of standard outer diameter of 0.125 mm to transfer data using light instead of normal copper cables.
Factors for Japan Breaks Internet Speed
Need for Speed: Internet speed is typically measured by how much data can be transmitted between two devices in one second.
Fiber-optic cables: Different types of internet connections transmit data over different types of hardware. The old dial-up connections, for example, relied on telephone wires, while the fastest kind of internet available today — fiber — uses fiber-optic cables.
Perfect fit: The laser and amplifiers used to break the fastest internet speed record are not cheap, so don’t expect 300 Tb/s home internet any time soon. That could still impact your internet usage, though. The NICT researchers envision their next-gen fiber-making technologies “beyond 5G” (like 6G) more practical. You may see the benefits simply by moving to faster internet access that doesn’t choke when there’s a surge of users.