New internet speed record: 178 terabits per second reached

The result obtained by the engineers at University College London would make it possible toa> download the entire Netflix library in less than a second

Image by Barbara Jackson from Pixabay The fastest data rate in the world has been obtained by a team of engineers from University College London that reached an internet speed one fifth of the previous record.

The team led by Professor Lidia Galdino, PhD in Electronics and Electronic Engineering in Brazil, it recorded a data transmission capacity of 178 terabits per second (or 178 million megabits). The speed is close to the theoretical limit of data transmissions indicated by the American mathematician Claude Shannon as early as 1949 and today would make it possible to download the entire Netflix library in less than a second.

The record set is double the capacity of any system currently deployed in the world and has been achieved by transmitting data through a much wider range of colors, lights or wavelengths than is typically used in optical fiber . The researchers, who conducted the study working together with undersea communications technology provider Xtera and Japan's Kddi research, used a 16.8 terahertz bandwidth, while current infrastructure uses a 4.5 Thz spectrum and some commercial networks. are now entering the 9 Thz market.

They have therefore combined different amplifier technologies to enhance the signal along the greatest bandwidth and maximize the speed by developing new constellations Geometric Shaping (combined signal schemes that optimize the properties of the light as phase, brightness and polarization), i.e. by manipulating the properties of each wavelength.