14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone gets annoyed when they have to wait for what it seems like dozens of endless seconds until a webpage loads. This might actually no longer be a problem in the near future. Australian researchers from the University of Sydney have found a rather simple method to pump up the speed of the Internet by almost 100 times.
A scratch in the optical fiber can make the information go on a different, shorter path. The graze is actually a photonic integrated circuit, as Professor Ben Eggleton, Director of CUDOS, based within the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, explained.
"This circuit uses the 'scratch' as a guide or a switching path for information - kind of like when trains are switched from one track to another - except this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks. This means that in one second the switch is turning on and off about one million times. We are talking about photonic technology that has terabit per second capacity," Eggleton added.
The experimental data prove that, at the moment, the technology boosts up to 60 times the speed of the Internet provided by Telstra, the largest provider of telecommunication and Internet in Australia. With further development, the increase of the speed could be such as to mean a 100 times better performance, as the scientists predict.
"Currently, we use electronics for our switching and that has been OK but as we move toward a more tech-savvy future there is a demand for instant web gratification. Photonic technology delivers what's needed and, more importantly, what's wanted," the professor said.
The deadline for the team of researchers to come up with some new outstanding technology that would remarkably improve the speed of Internet had initially been set for next year. However, users are counting on more concrete results sooner so that, hopefully, they will no longer be hindered by the seemingly not improvable Internet speed.