14 DAY TRIAL // Normal Wi-Fi networks work at 300 Mbps or sometimes at 450 Mbps when the 5 GHz band is used instead of 2.4 GHz.
Those rates are decent enough for consumers, but they don't really have what it takes to help larger setups, like data centers for instance. The range is also pretty short, at 20-30 feet (7-10 meters).
That is why researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a 40 GB/s Wi-Fi network.
It was all just a test, but it definitely shows how high wireless communications can go. The transfer speed of 40 GB/s (not Gbps) was sustained over a distance of 0.6 miles too.
The 240 GHz frequency played a key role in the feat. Along with “strong hardware,” it sent and received data at 320 Gbps, 2,300 times faster than the theoretical maximum of 802.11n (140Mbit/s), and 380x faster than the current top-tier 802.11ac standard (866Mbit/s).
Even the future 802.11ad will have to be multiplied by a factor of 46 to reach similar heights.
People from rural areas may soon have web links that actually move fast.