OKI Boosts Network Speed at 160Gb/s Over Distances

A whole lot of small start-ups claimed lately that they have managed to achieve dazzling data transfer rates over distances. However, their experiments have been conducted in extremely carefully controlled environments in order to demonstrate the concept itself. In fact, the fully-functional technology is slated for release in a matter of years.

Japanese company Oki has also made such an announcement, claiming network speeds of about 160 Gb/s using an optical connection that links two points at several hundred kilometers distances.

At the moment, the vast majority of top-tier carriers have built backbones that manage gigabit-class data across distances, but Oki's approach is totally different, as it can deliver the data over unlimited distances. The company claims that they achieved the new technology using "optically regenerated transmission" procedures, that preserve the integrity of signals across the fiber optics channel.

"This result proves that we can now transmit data at 160Gbps data, a speed equivalent to transmitting four movies, approximately 8 hours of data, in a single second. This amount of data at this speed can be sent over distances greater than the length of Japan, which is about 3,000km, and in fact to the other side of the planet, which is about 20,000km," said Takeshi Kamijo, General Manager of Corporate R&D Center at OKI.

While the classic technology requires placing optical amplifiers every 50 to 100km in order to prevent the signal from degrading, Oki's new approach uses a 3R regenerator, that uses a specialized optical-repeater technology for re-amplification, re-shaping and re-timing to avoid timing jitter buffers.

However, 160 Gbps is not the limit. According to Oki, the maximum theoretical speed is somewhere in the 200 Mbps range.

The company announced that the new process will be ready for implementation sometime in 2010, but it will initially be adopted by enterprises and military institutions, rather than by domestic consumers.