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World's Fastest Internet Speed Makes Download Speeds 1 Million Times Faster Than Current Broadband

World's Fastest Internet Speed Makes Download Speeds 1 Million Times Faster Than Current Broadband

It's fast enough to download 1,000 HD films in a single second

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

Australian researchers claim to have developed a device that enables the fastest internet speeds ever recorded - which could allow users to download 1,000 HD movies in a split second.

The world record speed gives users 44.2 terabits per second - which, if you don't know your terabits, is pretty bloody fast. If you're reading this in Australia, it's a million times faster than a good National Broadband Network connection.

According to The Independent, the team from Australian universities - Monash, Swinburne and RMIT - used a 'micro-comb' optical chip containing hundreds of infrared lasers to transfer data across existing communications infrastructure in Melbourne.

Arnan Mitchell was one of the professors leading the team.
RMIT

The research was led by Monash University's Dr Bill Corcoran, RMIT's Arnan Mitchell and Swinburne's Professor David Moss.

Mitchell explained that the future ambition of the project was to scale up the current transmitters from hundreds of gigabytes per second towards tens of terabytes per second without increasing size, weight or cost.

He said: "Long-term, we hope to create integrated photonic chips that could enable this sort of data rate to be achieved across existing optical fibre links with minimal cost.

"Initially, these would be attractive for ultra-high speed communications between data centres. However, we could imagine this technology becoming sufficiently low cost and compact that it could be deployed for commercial use by the general public in cities across the world."

Optical fibres transmit information as light pulses.
RMIT

Monash University's Dr Bill Corcoran told AAP: "At 40 terabits per second, we were able to put through one single fibre about three times the peak data rate that the NBN has ever seen over its entire network."

He added: "If you've got 400 gigabit per second to share amongst a bunch of people, that cake only gets chopped up a so many times before the slices become too thin. If you've got a bigger cake, then you can give people bigger slices."

According to an RMIT press release, the internet was tested on 76.6km of 'dark' optical fibres between RMIT's Melbourne City Campus and Monash University's Clayton Campus. This is known as the testbed.

The team used a new device that replaces 80 lasers with one single piece of equipment known as a micro-comb, which is smaller and lighter than existing telecommunications hardware.

It acts like a rainbow made up of hundreds of high quality infrared lasers from a single chip. Each 'laser' has the capacity to be used as a separate communications channel.

Researchers placed the micro-comb - contributed by Swinburne University - onto the testbed optical fibres and sent maximum data down each channel, simulating peak internet usage, across 4THz of bandwidth.

It is the first time any micro-comb has been used in a field trial. That deserves a 'congrats', I'd say.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: News, Technology, Australia