We have a new, blazing-fast internet speed record, courtesy of London’s UCL engineers. How fast? 178 terabits a second! According to the university’s coverage, this is fast enough to download Netflix’s entire library in the blink of an eye.
The record was accomplished by transmitting data through wider ranges of light (wavelengths) than what’s typically used in optical connections. “Current infrastructure uses a limited spectrum bandwidth of 4.5THz, with 9THz commercial bandwidth systems entering the market, whereas the researchers used a bandwidth of 16.8THz,” UCL explained.
“At this speed, it would take less than an hour to download the data that made up the world’s first image of a black hole (which, because of its size, had to be stored on half a ton of hard drives and transported by plane),” UCL added. “The speed is close to the theoretical limit of data transmission set out by American mathematician Claude Shannon in 1949.”
The previous record was held by Japan, which managed to “only” hit 142 Tbits/s. Imagine how much ISPs in the future will charge for this kind of speed.