We must make ISPs a public service owned by the people. Who can argue that internet isn’t essential to being a regular member of society? These companies rob us and use their monopolies to manipulate us.
By constructing a device called an optical processor, however, researchers could access the never-before-used E- and S-bands.
It’s called an amplifier not processor, the Aston University page has it correct. And at least the S-band has seen plenty of use in ordinary CWDM systems, just not amplified. We have at least 20 operational S-band links at 1470 and 1490 nm in our backbone right now. The E-band maybe less so, because the optical absorption peak of water in conventional fiber sits somewhere in the middle of it. You could use it with low water peak fiber, but for most people it hasn’t been attractive trying to rent spans of only the correct type of fiber.
the E-band, which sits adjacent to the C-band in the electromagnetic spectrum
No, it does not, the S-band is between them. It goes O-band, E-band, S-band, C-band, L-band, for “original” and “extended” on the left side, and “conventional”, flanked by “short” and “long” on the right side.
Now to the actual meat: This is a cool material science achievement. However in my professional opinion this is not going to matter much for conventional terrestrial data networks. We already have the option of adding more spectrum to current C-band deployments in our networks, by using filters and additional L-band amplifiers. But I am not aware of any network around ours (AS559) that actually did so. Because fundamentally the question is this:
Which is cheaper:
renting a second pair of fiber in an existing cable, and deploying the usual C-band equipment on the second pair,
keeping just one pair, and deploying filters and the more expensive, rarer L-band equipment, or
keeping just one pair, and using the available C-band spectrum more efficiently with incremental upgrades to new optics?
Currently, for us, there is enough spectrum still open in the C-band. And our hardware supplier is only just starting to introduce some L-band equipment. I’m currently leaning towards renting another pair being cheaper if we ever get there, but that really depends on where the big buying volume of the market will move.
Now let’s say people do end up extending to the L-band. Even then I’m not so sure that extending into the E- and S- bands as the next further step is going to be even equally attractive, for the simple reason that attenuation is much lower at the C-band and L-band wavelengths.
Maybe for subsea cables the economics shake out differently, but the way I understand their primary engineering constraint is getting enough power for amplifiers to the middle of the ocean, so maybe more amps, and higher attenuation, is not their favourite thing to develop towards either. This is hearsay though, I am not very familiar with their world.
I remember the early 90’s when fiber connection was being developed in research centers.
Researchers had found a way to transmit all of a country’s phone calls’ bandwidth through a simple fiber cable. Then, they wondered: what could we use this for?
This was a few years before the explosion of the internet…
Its a shame i dont have an ethernet cable that fast or a motherboard with a network interface capable of that speed.
Great if i can get faster fibre into my home but my internal infrastructure is not up to the task. This wont be in the home until we can use fibre cables like we currently use ethernet cables.
Or is there some other tech that would replace ethernet that would handle those speeds. Also whats my wrote speed on my ssd?
Yeah i dont know if thisnis a tech thats meant for home, more likely large businesses with lots of devices all fighting for bandwidth.
It will only be used for corporations, but at some point we will also get it for our homes, but not yet. Also Theres still a lot of research to do before this will be used anywhere.
I’m highly suspicious about group dispersion over long distances. Today’s infrastructure was developed for a certain range of frequencies. Broading it right away wouldn’t be applicable that easy - we would need to introduce error correction which compromises the speed multiplier.
I don’t understand why, tho I do not have any kind of expertise here.
I suggest (Haven’t read it), this paper proposes to send much denser and broadened signals around one carrier frequency (they use single mode). Due to dispersion they
Start to overlap with one each other. If you put more frequencies, you would have more overlaps and I fail to see how it won’t lead to errors.
They all arrive at the broader time window, which again could be mitigated either by error correction, or by extending the time window.
Okay, let’s read and find out whether we can find something that we don’t know.
There’s no paper, there is no letter, it’s a simple statement at the institute page. The way science is being communicated nowadays is frustrating.
From the statement
However, alongside the commercially available C and L-bands, we used two additional spectral bands called E-band and S-band. Such bands traditionally haven’t been required because the C- and L-bands could deliver the required capacity to meet consumer needs.
So they indeed broadened the frequency range.
They also did not say anything about limitations. They just pushed this bizarre number everywhere 🤷🏼♂️
Also 1.2 million times less likely to leave the research stadium because even if this is true (very big if already) it’s still “new and exciting and revolutionary improvement #3626462” this week alone. Revolutionary new battery tech comes out twice a week if you believe the pop sci tech sites, it’s 99.9% crap
Stuff like this is a bit more believable. Still will be more than a decade before we will see any benefit. First all of the sea cables would get the upgrade, then private companies (banks mainly), then governments (military and such), ISPs will prolly not touch it for as long as possible till governments force em.
Battery advancements aren’t crap. We’ve gotten 5-8% improvement in capacity per year, which compounds to a doubling every 10 to 15 years. Every advancement covered by over sensationalized pop sci articles you’ve ever heard has contributed to that. It’s important not to let sensationalism make you jaded to actual advancements.
Now, as for broadband, we haven’t pushed out the technologies to the last mile that we already have. However, this sort of thing is useful for the backbone and universities. Universities sometimes have to transfer massive amounts of data, and some of the most efficient ways to do that are a van full of hard drives.
That’s not what I said though, I meant that 99.9% of the “revolutionary new battery technology” articles on blogs, magazines and what not are clickbait crap. I’ve seen these articles for at least the last 25 years and hlbeyond lit-ion batteries, not much revolutionary has happened on the battery front. My point was more against the clickbait science and tech news that regurgitates the same dumb crap all the time
PopSci in general has seen better days. I tried subscribing again to their physical magazines and it’s just a mess… There were more full page cigarette ads than interesting articles.
Eh, I would say it’s to be expected. A lot of infrastructure still relies on coax/DOCSIS which has its limitations in comparison to an all-fiber backbone. (This post has some good explanations.) However it wouldn’t surprise me if some ISPs argue that “nobody needs that much uplink” and “it helps restrict piracy” when really it’s just them holding out against performing upgrades.
it really shouldnt be though, this is going to be in effect for like, the next decade or two. FTTH is literally fresh off the presses for most suburbanites, and city dwellers, i see no reason that this standard should be so antiquated anymore.
Literally only incentivizes ISPs to keep rolling out shitty infra that’s slow as balls everywhere that isn’t suburbia.
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