There’s nothing more frustrating than having a faulty broadband connection while trying to stream your favorite show.
However, thanks to a team of British scientists, buffering could be a thing of the past, as they have developed a connection 1.6 million times faster than home broadband.
Researchers at Alton University and their international collaborators have developed a new way of using fibre optic cables to increase transmission speeds.
This new method is capable of transferring a world record speed of 402 terabits per second, exceeding the previous record of 301 terabits per second by 25 percent.
And this technique can be performed on the same standard fiber optic cables already in use, meaning no new cables would be needed.
Researchers have discovered a new way to transfer data over fiber optic cables that can reach world-record speeds of 402 terabits per second (file image)
Although this world record is only an experiment, researchers say this technology could be available as soon as it is “mature.”
However, Professor Wladek Forysiak, from the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, told MailOnline this would be more relevant to “national backbone networks” than the individual consumer.
This means the new technology would be used to build a faster national internet infrastructure, even if those changes would be felt most in large enterprises, such as data centers.
In a technical report published by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), researchers announced they had set a new “world record” for data transfer speed.
For context, Netflix recommends that users have a minimum bandwidth of three megabits per second to stream HD content without interruptions (1 million megabits equals one terabit).
The speeds achieved by the researchers in this trial are more than 100 million times faster than the recommended bandwidth.
According to a Deloitte study, a household with five office workers will probably not need more than 50 megabits per second of bandwidth.
Even a household of four influencers with three of them uploading 4K videos and downloading content at the same time would need just over 314 megabits per second.
With the speeds achieved in this study, data from millions of homes like this could be transferred over an optical fiber without any delay.
Compared to the recommended bandwidth needed to stream HD content on Netflix, this new method is over 100 million times faster.
And the most exciting thing about this new research is that these amazing speeds were achieved with standard fiber optic cables.
This means that current fiber optic networks could potentially be upgraded to these incredible speeds without the need to lay new cables.
Dr Phillips, from the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, said: “This discovery could help increase the capacity of a single fibre to give the world a higher-performance system.”
Fiber optic cables, used in all high-speed broadband connections, work by bouncing beams of light along the inside of glass threads.
Compared to copper cables that used to be common, fiber optic cables are faster, lose less data, and can carry more data at once.
Researchers achieve these speeds by transferring signals across six “bands” of the infrared spectrum at the same time. Most current fiber optic cables only transfer one or two at a time.
Many Britons have to deal with slow broadband speeds and the 2023 figures revealed the specific streets with the worst connections. Researchers claim their new technique produces speeds 1.6 million times faster than a standard broadband connection
One of the biggest advantages of fiber optic cables is that light in different wavelengths can be transmitted through them.
Signals sent over different “bands” of the infrared spectrum do not interfere with each other as they travel through the cable, so they can be read separately once they reach their destination.
This means that optical fiber can carry multiple signals at once, greatly increasing the amount of data that can be carried at any given time, also called bandwidth.
To break the world record for data transmission, the Alton University team transferred data across all six available bands.
This breakthrough breaks the previous record of 301 terabytes per second by 25 percent and leaves previous results far behind (shown in the chart).
This technique was tested on standard fibre optic cables, meaning networks could be upgraded without the need to lay new cables underground (file image)
To do this, the researchers had to build custom amplifiers to boost the signal in the longer parts of the wavelength, which are not normally used.
NICT researchers had previously set the record for the fastest data transfer rate, at 301 terabits per second, in an attempt using four of the six wavelengths.
Despite the potential of this technology, most fiber optic cables typically only transmit data along two of the most stable bands of the infrared spectrum.
Currently, that provides more than enough bandwidth to transfer the data needed for most people’s Internet use.
However, as data usage is predicted to increase in the future, researchers note that these two bands could soon become congested.
Dr Philips says: “The newly developed technology is expected to contribute significantly to expanding the communication capacity of the optical communication infrastructure as future data services rapidly increase in demand.”
