Connected at speeds users only dream of

The Tyndall institute in Cork has produced a two terabit persecond connection - the stuff of dreams, writes MARIE BORAN

A RECENT breakthrough at the Tyndall National Institute in Corkis the equivalent of the Harry Potterbus that magically compressesitself to fit in impossibly tight spaces. It is the world's firsttwo terabit per second (2Tb/s) ethernet transmission demonstrationwithin optical fibres.

This is blisteringly fast, says Prof Andrew Ellis, seniorresearch fellow at the Photonic Systems Group in the institute. Overa connection like this you could download 100 2GB (gigabyte) high-definition movies in a single second.

"Most consumers would dream of having a 1GB connection. Thisexperiment is 1,000 times faster than their wildest dreams," hesays.

It's not the kind of broadband connection that the averageconsumer would ever need but it is exactly where large corporationssuch as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are headed in termsof transporting data out of and between their vast data centres.

Facebook, as a cloud provider, has already talked about the needfor 1Tb/s ethernet and specifically mentioned "spectral efficiency"as a challenge.

Tyndall's novel technique actually uses spectral efficiency tomake better use of the bandwidth, explains Dr Paul Gunning, networktechnology expert with BT who is collaborating with the institute onthis research.

BT has custom-built a 124km loop of its standard optical fibrethat runs between the institute in Cork city and Clonakilty toperform these 2Tb/s experiments.

"The length of this loop is perfect for BT because it correspondsto the average distances between many cities in Ireland and the UK.If we can transport data at 2Tb/s here, we can replicate itanywhere," says Dr Gunning.

Tyndall's technique is great for squeezing bandwidth because itmakes use of colours within the optical spectrum.

When light is shone through a prism, it splits into differentcolours, explains Prof Ellis.

Each colour on the spectrum can transmit data and the institutehas achieved a world first by overlapping these colours to pack moredata in without compromising its integrity.

"It's a bit like suddenly being able to increase the capacity ofthe main road between Dublin and Cork by building multiple roads ontop of one another," says |Dr Gunning.

There are other aspects to the institute's technology. At suchtransfer speeds, errors can creep in, explains Dr Gunning. Using atechnique called "forward error correction" the institute can detectand correct for these errors as data flies at breakneck speed.

In addition, the 124kms of optical fibre has been developed toact as its own amplifier and boost the signal.

This kind of speed will trickle down to consumers and businessusers because everything is headed towards the cloud, says DrGunning.

"Increasingly all of our data is not being held on a desktop orlocal server but instead in vast data centres like Amazon andGoogle. The cloud isn't down the road from you; it could be onanother continent.

Not only is our data - from Dropbox file to Gmail attachments -being stored and accessed on these mammoth data centres but it alsoneeds to be replicated almost instantly by these companies.

Imagine all the users accessing this data in real time and youcan see how it is starting to consume bandwidth on an internetprovider's core network. This is why BT considers its collaborationwith Tyndall to be essential future proofing as the cloud continuesto grow.

Since the establishment of the institute in 2003 a team of two tothree researchers has been working full time on spectral efficiency,which has culminated in this breakthrough - 2Tb/s data transfer overethernet. While the institute's technology is unique, the speedlimit has recently been surpassed by researchers in Japan.

Prof Ellis says plans for the future involve developing biggerand better speeds. "We'd like to take the record back."