I don’t think there is anyone who actually thinks the Internet is fast enough. Improving the speed of the Internet should be a top priority, but now that scientists at the University of Sidney have unveiled a new switch, which could speed up the Internet 60 times fold, we can’t imagine that there were anyone out there who could have guessed the key to this. The project has spanned over four years and the heart of it all has been glass, or more precise scratched glass. Through a small scratch it’s possible to get an instantaneous and perfect access to the Internet.
“Using photonic technology that has terabit per second speed, the circuit uses the scratch as a guide or a switching path for information. Similar to when trains are switched from one track to another, this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks. Therefore in one second the switch is turning on and off about one million times.”
Even if the technology has proved to be 60 times faster than Australia’s Telstra network, it’s far from the goal. The researchers at CUDOS (Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems) have already visualized how the technology could result in up to 100 times faster networks. It’s not just about replacing the optical fiber cables but simply making the network handling more efficient.
How, if and when this technology will be used in our worldwide networks remains to be seen.
