Internet2 is a network used by universities, companies and scientists to be able to share great amounts of data fast and easy. Internet2 is working parallel to the commersial Internet and the maximal transfer rate is at 10Gbps, in theory. Recently a new transfer speed record was set at 8.8Gbps, which however is nothing compared to what that is about to come according to the developers of Internet2. They say that they already have applications that require more than 10Gbps and plans for extending the speed 80 fold by transferring data as different colors of light, which would result in enough bandwidth to connect all the world’s telescopes or other extremely demanding tasks.
“In the new network, Internet2 will have the cables all to itself. Operators will initially be able to transmit data using 10 colors, or wavelengths, of light over a single cable, giving the network a capacity of 100 Gbps. Eventually, Internet2 hopes to transmit on 80 wavelengths.”
This results in a theoretical bandwidth at 800Gbps and that has to be considered a quite impressive speed.
Source: Washington Post
