What is Digg?73 Comments
- timewarrior, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33quote from the story:
"For most of its journey, the data travels at the speed of light along optical fibers. But each time the information stream is switched, amplified, reprocessed or regenerated, it requires silicon-based electronics, which are much slower."
This story is definitely talking about lower latency. - timewarrior, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30If the silicon based chips are slowing the Internet then switching to photonic chips will bring it back closer to the speed of light.I think the title makes sense if you read the story.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+29when are people going to stop posting useless comments like, "why is this on the front page with X amount of diggs"? it does not help the discussion of the article.
- Raptor45, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@aristotle1990:
This site is (primarily...) about the latest and greatest in tech news. Regardless of whether we'll be seeing it in stores tomorrow, it is still relevant news to find out what new things are being researched and developed; what we can expect in the future. If you want yesterdays news, just turn on your TV. - alphgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9And the RIAA will be able to sue you prior to the song actually being published...woot.
- Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'm unsurprised that my fellow Australians are building this. They're probably sick of getting a minimum 200ms ping whenever they play Xbox Live. Australians do things better, full stop.
(That's another thing. Why do Americans say 'period'? Periods are bad enough every four weeks, without occurring at the end of every sentence.) - EODMpink, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11whatever keeps the midget porn coming.
- konspence, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Satellite internet needs the speed of light now.
- Rhaegal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6No, it means you can hear music from the future!!!
- theplant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The title should have read:
Australian scientists believe they are on the verge of a breakthrough in optical circuitry that may improve the speed of the internet in all countries (except for America) by a factor of 1000.
You could say American bandwidth increases slowly because of the size of the nation itself, but whatever the reason is, the article's speed increases won't be hitting Comcast networks anytime soon if the past is any indication. - philovivero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Australians do things better, full stop. (That's another thing. Why do Americans say 'period'? Periods are bad enough every four weeks, without occurring at the end of every sentence.)"
Because, in the US, "full stop" is what you do at a stop sign before proceeding through the intersection with caution. If we swap the usage, that means everyone in the US has to have a period every time they come to a controlled intersection, and the loss of blood would cause sporatic voting patterns. Hmm. Maybe that'd be an improvement... - admirabumblebee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"That's it, PERIOD."
It's signifying the end of the sentence in a more hyperbolic way, as to say, "That's the end of it, there is nothing more to say on the subject". The phrase "full stop" means the exact same thing, in fact 'full stop' is a pure synonym for 'period'.
It's not just americans who say it either, you said it twice :P - timewarrior, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Link to the CUDOS website
http://www.cudos.org.au/cudos/p_chip.php - jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No kidding. Net in america is sloww..... or expensive and im sick of it!
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3CUDOS to timewarrior for posting this link.
- alphgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The minimum theoretical latency between points on opposite sides of the Earth is about 100 ms. This is based on a direct fibre running along the surface of the Earth with no switches. Distance travelled is 19,500 km. Speed of light through fibre is around 0.5 - 0.7 c (150,000 - 200,000 km/s).
Even at full lightspeed the latency would be about 66 ms. - chicagospur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The story is complete BS.
Although O-E-O conversion does add some latency, it's in the microsecond range. Round Trip Delay between the US and Aus is around 240 milliseconds. Unless they have found a way to increase the speed of light and dig a tunnel through the center of the earth, there is no way they will get that time down to 0.2ms. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Chips built of glass running at lightspeed and at 1% of the usual power consumption will be pretty handy.... until you drop your laptop.
*SMASH* - jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2ya but here in amercia people will still pay aol 21 a month for 56k haha
- phobozad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2the real reason for poor internet speed & latency in Australia is the lack of large backbones connecting it to the rest of the world: http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/images/cable_map_wallpaper10x7.jpg
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ konspence - yeah they're going to replace all those switches & routers on the nano tube thingies tied to the satelites.
- ohnnyj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2With much research being done in string and m theory maybe they will find a way to open up miniture wormholes for data to flow through, thus no longer relying on a physical network. I know this sounds like a lot of science fiction, and may never happen, but much contemporary research is going into such very technolgy for space travel so why not local solutions.
- dcmjzero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Alot of you are wrong. Fiber optics are actually "slower" than a copper line. They just have higher bandwidth. The speed of light thru glass is about (.5)*c, which is slower than an electrical signal thru copper. Fiber, however, has higher bandwidth and thus is "faster," but with a longer delay.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's such an overused comment.
- chicagospur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It will be a little longer than 100ms, allowing for the curvature of the earth and bearing in mind that light doesn't travel directly down a fibre but bounces through it.
- Nicklogan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4yay! faster porn!
- GrimReeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The funny thing is even if a Australian scientist invented it or the breakthrough or whatever, we will probaly be one of the last to use the technology ='(
And title is misleading since Fibre internet is techincally already the speed of light since it uses light pulses to send data. - kazsymonds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Period
1. A period of pure agony for a female, lasting way too long. Signs of this state include screaming at anything that moves, rolling around on the couch in pain, and spending hours with cold water and stain remover.
2. A useful thing that ends a scentence, that does not exist for most l337 people.
1. "PERIODS ARE EBIL!!! EEEEBILLL!!!"
2. "Use a period for once, goddamnit."
- cube, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1google
- Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, the funniest thing is that the Australian scientists will have to take it offshore to develop it properly. In Australia we breed these remarkable people who can't get money for brilliant things from a single one of the suited gorillas and grey suburban accountants who rule the country.
Teh noes indeed. - teammate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Imagine how fast tittie pop ups will be.
You won't be able to keep closing them all before your mom comes in. - waynejkruse10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Ironically an austrailian scientist is developing this when much of australia is on 56k's."
All my friends and I are on ADSL :-/ soon to have 24mbit ADSL2 .... :-/ - satori3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would love this to be true, but I can't help wondering how processing the info with chips built with light is going to change anything. Why would they simply focus on data transmissions. Why wouldn't they use this for computing or any other host of applications where electricity is used and speed is a factor. I work for a major incumbent Data network provider and beyond better use of light wave lengths I haven't heard of any great strides forward in terms of through put. Still, I look forward to seeing what they do with this.
- ub3rgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is all great and dandy but who is going to pay for the reconstruction of the internet backbone thats allready in place?
- SpikeX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1First thought that came to my mind: MySpace will flourish. And God forbid it does.
- scruffmaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice...looking forward to it...
- kysle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I meant that the one more flash of light is the green. It could also be a sequence of flashes that mean something. I guess I am just grasping at straws, trying to come up with a very basic compression formula.
I realize too, that the processor would probably take more time turning the information given by the green into machine code than it actually sending the raw code. - kysle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Right. But... (maybe I'm being thick-headed here)
If your looking at transfering data, why do we have to limit ourselves to ones and zeros? Why not have a third or fourth dimension that would add another level of information with only one more flash of light? This is then interpreted back to being switches.
(I think) an example of a four-bit coding would be DNA, no?
What is modulation? This? - alphgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I allowed for both the curvature of the Earth and the additional latency of fibre....
- FLarsen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sending one packet from one side of the world to the other is of course no problem, but when you are sending a lot of packets in turn it matters. One computer sends a packet to another. The other computer answers. The first one gets the answer and sends a new packet, and so on. This is what happens in online gaming and can get a lot better with optical chips.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And yet it gets modded up everytime.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1windows+m
duh - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sounds great, just dont let At&t have this technology!!!!!
- afbase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1 "Chalcogenide can also be printed, to create circuits. Scientists created 'band gap' structures within the glass - patterns of tiny holes that further control the light beams. Professor Eggleton says this band gap could be the photonic equivalent of the basic unit of electronics - the semi-conductor."
So is this professor saying that Chalcogenide will replace silicon (PNP and NPN) transistors? If so then this means much more than just fast internet...it means unimaginable computer power.
Ironically an austrailian scientist is developing this when much of australia is on 56k's. - kysle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Please excuse my lack of pure technical language.
Would it be possible, with this, to have a 1 a 0 and a GREEN, or something like that? So that the third, or fourth, or whatever expands on the code so like: 10Green would really mean: 1010 and 1Green0 would be 110.
I am probably talking out of my ass but is this feasable? The reason I am asking this, is I guess, because if we hit the lightspeed data transfers (the speed limit of the universe), doesn't that mean in the future in order to make our machines faster we have to add a new element (i.e. more more fiber optic cables at once). - scheper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm on 20Mbit right now, and it's far more than I need. I'd be satisfied with 2Mbit, but I'm sure I could make do with much less if I had to.
- Ibox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sorry let me edit my prev. statement... QPSK works off of Phase shift and how far out of phase the freq. is, not amplitude and freq. but I think I just created a new type of modulation, I'll call it "FAM"
but the same pricipal applys. - Ibox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0one more flash of light is what the 1's and 0's are you wouldn't be increasing anything. you are limited by how fast you can flicker the light, not by your word length.
Modulation, you have a given frequency, called a carrier wave, and depending on what type of modulation you are using (FM, AM, FSK, QPSK, etc.) you alter it with the information you are sending. when recieved these alterations are read, or demodulated, and turned into sound, images on your comp. screne, or whatever you are looking for.
QPSK, is a digital modulation that when a 1is sent, depending what carrier freq, and amplitude, and maybe some other magic is done it is read as a much larger word length. ex. 1 @ 120gig. @ 20 mw. = 10010. - Zaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, it depends on your applications, alej744. Folks who play around with massively multi-player virtual environments like Second Life would love to have orders of magnitude more bandwidth, I'm sure. And even if you don't give a scrape about those applications, who knows what other applications might be possible with this much bandwidth. You don't know what somebody might do with a set of tools until you first give 'em the tools.
- Ibox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+01's and 0's represent positions of switches, a switch cannot be on, off, green.
you could represent a larger string of code w/ a smaller one but that is already done through modulation. -
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