Japan has again set the bar higher in world infrastructure—not only with its bullet trains, high-tech airports, and earthquake-resistant buildings, but now with a record-breaking feat in internet technology as well.
Scientists there broke records by achieving an incredible data rate of 1.02 petabits per second, a pace so rapid that it would be able to download the entire library of Netflix in a matter of minutes.
In order to understand the extent of this achievement, Japan's new internet speed is about 16 million times more rapid than India's mean connection speed of 63.55 Mbps, and 3.5 million times more rapid than America's mean. These statistics were cited by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).
The feat was achieved by the NICT's Photonic Network Laboratory group, working with Sumitomo Electric and some European partners. The high-speed system consisted of a specially designed optical fibre cable having 19 cores, through which data can be sent 1,808 kilometers per second—a giant stride in the long-distance data transmission.
To illustrate, with such speed, one could hypothetically download the entire English-language Wikipedia—which takes up around 100 GB—10,000 times in just one second, according to tech site Gagadget. Similarly, ultra-high-definition 8K videos could be downloaded almost instantly.
One of the impressive details of the breakthrough is that the new fibre optic cable shares the same 0.125 mm diameter as existing optical fibres in operation today. This indicates the technology is not only compatible with the infrastructure available today, but it is also an applicable upgrade and not an overhaul. The total amount of data the team was able to transmit at 1.86 exabits per second per kilometre is the highest ever achieved over distance.
While Sumitomo Electric conducted the design of the multi-core optical fiber, NICT worked on developing the high-performance transmission system in collaboration with an overseas research team.
The feat was accomplished using a complex setup of 19 transmission loops, each being 86.1 kilometers long. The signals of the data traveled 21 times through the loops, hence a distance of 1,808 kilometers, with 180 parallel data streams being transported at record-breaking speeds.
Through this achievement, Japan not only expands the limits of digital connectivity but also shows the possibility of future networks achieving near-instantaneous data transmission with existing fibre-optic standards.
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