New technology can increase Fibre speeds

[Calavera]

Article simply said: 

A new way of sending a signal through a fibre cable may be implemented in the future, this new technique basically involves sending the signal through it twice, since you have to put more "current" through it to reach longer distances, it results in noise on the signal, causing a loss of transmission performance, leaving you with less of a signal when further away. When they send the signal twice at the same time it basically covers up that loss and thus enables for much greater distances since they can increase the "current" through it without losing too much data. 

 

Link to the article: http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2013.109.html

 

EDIT: Just a small recap; they don't have to change any hardware, the new technique just enables them to put more power behind it which wasn't a real option before.

So if you got fibre you could benefit from this new technique.

[boggle4321]

this seems like a good idea, however i think it will be very expensive as fibre is already expensive and using twice as much power wont help, also i doubt you get twice the speed.

[gjrud]

Good, by the time it's developed I may have been reached by normal fibre :D

[Calavera]

this seems like a good idea, however i think it will be very expensive as fibre is already expensive and using twice as much power wont help, also i doubt you get twice the speed.

The article states they got a much greater reach with this new technique... this concept (which is proven) has surprisingly never been implemented before, they don't have to change any hardware. They just have to send the signal twice at the same time and that enables them to put more current through it. Until now they couldn't do that since it would cause a loss of data which now is no longer an issue (doesn't go on forever of course)

EDIT: Also you seem to have misread the article :)

They put the signal through twice, the reach they got was actually a 100+ times faster than any fibre ISP can deliver in the Netherlands for example.

[Legion]

Good, by the time it's developed I may have been reached by normal fibre :D

 

Here here man! 10 Km up the road the have 150 down 50 up.

 

Me I have 5down .36up I pay the same price.

[CornOnJacob]

I'm kind of confused how sending the signal twice speeds things up. Wouldn't redundant signals just slow things down (you're sending twice as much stuff with the same bandwidth)?

[fredghostkyle]

that dont seem right. i think i smell some fish here. 

[Calavera]

CornOnJacob, on 28 May 2013 - 01:27 AM, said:

I'm kind of confused how sending the signal twice speeds things up. Wouldn't redundant signals just slow things down (you're sending twice as much stuff with the same bandwidth)?

You send a signal through the cable, the reach isn't high so you put more "current" (as they describe it) through it so it can get further, but the problem with putting more current through it is that there will be more noise on the signal causing data loss.

Sending the signal twice at the same time covers up most of that loss of data and thus enables them to put even more current through it and reach even further.

Say you could get to 10 kilometers before losing the signal completely.

You put 10% more current through it and it reaches 11 kilomters now, problem is that the speed dropped a lot because of the extra current...

With the new technique they put twice the signal in there, reaching 100 kilometers (just an example, keep that in mind) since they can put 300% more power in there.

The speed will not drop a lot since the 2nd signal that goes through there at the same time covers up for that lost data.

It's like having 2 straws sucking up lemonade, if 1 straw gets a hole in it halfway the lemonade will still pass through since it can go through the 2nd straw.

Hope this explains it a bit better :)

EDIT: To answer your question about how it could do that with the same amount of bandwith; the bandwith is made bigger, the bandwith you have on fiber today can be made a lot bigger - thus enabling them to put faster speeds through it.