Siemens demonstrates 107 Gbits per second network

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 21 December 2006 02:00

Business IT - Networking

Finding your broadband connection a bit slow? Siemens has offered a glimmer of hope for bandwidth fiends after demonstrating an implementation of a network which can transmit data at a whopping 107 gigabits a second.

The demonstration network, which was run via an unnamed telco in the US, transmitted data over a 100 mile (160 kilometre) fibre-optic network. The high speed was achieved by processing data through "purely electrical" means before and after transmission, Siemens said in a statement. Siemens had purely demonstrated an electrical receiver mechanism, but that system still required a converter for transmission.

The speed is more than two-and-a-half times faster than the previous record for data transmission, which Siemens also claims to have set on the same network. 107 gigabits translates to roughly the amount of content found on two DVDs, or around 1200 Paris Hilton music track downloads (not that we'd endorse such a concept).

Sadly for those of us still struggling to download video at a decent rate, commercial implementations will be some time in coming. Siemens says it will be "a few years" before such high-speed products are launched on the market. The system could theoretically handle around 100,000 simultaneous DSL connections, researchers estimate.