[LINK] terrabit per second internet

[David Lochrin]

On Wednesday 09 September 2009 11:41, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> As you say, you'll need ten fibres (for example) to run a terabit Sy-Me; 
> but the passives that CUDOS is working on (not only them, there are 
> plenty of other researchers in this particular game) would, for eg, 
> split / combine the terabit "trunk" across the multiple bits of glass 
> without electrical conversion.

Interesting, however I wonder whether splitting & combining data streams is worth the effort?  The complexity and cost of splitting & combining would be high at the speeds involved, and what would it achieve?  There's probably no single type of data stream which requires a data rate faster than can be provided by one fibre, so the best cost/benefit might be obtained by using multiple fibres to provide asynchronous capacity for independent bit streams.

I don't know if this actually occurs, by I imagine small changes in the group velocity of photon bundles in individual fibres, perhaps due to mechanical or temperature stresses, could play havoc with splitting & combining at those data rates.

Or is this too naive?

David