Researchers have achieved an incredible feat of achieving the fastest internet speeds ever – at a staggering 44.2 TERA-bits per seconds.
According to reports, the new technology, which is actually an optical chip that is as tiny as a fingernail has already been tested in an existing fiber broadband line in Australia.
The internet speeds were achieved and sustained in a non-laboratory, consumer network.
What’s more even in the coded, in-field tests, the drop in peak speeds was not drastic.
The achievement has been made by a group of researchers from the universities of Monash, Swinburne and RMIT in Australia.
The detail about this feat was published in the Nature Communications journal.
“The speeds achieved reached 44.2 Tbps at peak, and in a coded line, the peak speed fell to 39 Tbps – a near-12 per cent drop, but hey, we aren’t complaining at all,” the journal quoted.
To achieve the fastest internet speeds ever, the researchers used what is referred to as ‘soliton crystal micro-combs’.
In simpler terms, this optical chip is a super high-density chip that can replace 80 laser nodes inside an optic fiber broadband cable.
This micro-comb act like a splitter thereby dividing an existing optic fiber cable into 80 unique channels.
However, what is particularly impressive note is that each channel preserves its peak bandwidth capacity, or the maximum amount of data that it can carry.
Hence, by deploying this chip inside existing telecommunications cables and infrastructure, the maximum internet speeds delivered can increase exponentially.