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Wednesday, September 1, 2021

the speed - connectivity - Internet of things ! - transfer of data !!

The fastest is always the attraction !!  ~ the man in the photo is happily glued to his mobile, just most people are – walking, talking, driving, eating and what not! – happy browsing and whiling away on social media.



At Tokyo Olympics 2020, Thompson-Herah stole the show with a quite breath-taking 10.61sec run that broke Florence Griffith-Joiner's 1988 mark by one hundredth of a second. She was followed over by double champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in 10.74sec and Shericka Jackson in 10.76sec in a Jamaican 1-2-3.  In Men’s 100M sprint - Marcell Jacobs of Italy sprinted to Olympic gold   finishing in 9.80 seconds. Fred Kerley of the United States finished second in 9.84 seconds, and Andre De Grasse of Canada was third (9.89).

At the time of posting this – one web revealed ‘Your Internet speed is 85 mbps; another one put it at 93.7 - yet another one showed it at 97 mbps – it is actually slightly less than half of the speed promised by ISP – yet am happy, because when I upload say 30 odd photos to a post in FB – they get uploaded in less than a minute or slight above !  .. .. and life goes on happily browsing so many and downloading so much !!

About a two  decades  and a half-ago, accessing web was not easy.  One needed a telephone connection and another from an ISP – there were no modems but ‘dial-up’ connection.  Remember that in mid 1990s, an external Agency came to our Training centre for teaching Officers, what ‘Internet’ and ‘world wide web’ is about – after close to a dozen attempts, they failed miserably with the net not connecting and not taking to any of the searched information !  - those were the days of ‘dialler connection’ that used the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) via telephone lines.

Remember purchasing  Mantra Online and Dishnet packs for usage – and some of us bought another telephone line as We were not able to call or receive calls when connected to the internet.  Present generation would never be able to understand that we existed without ‘mobile connection’ and the landline could get disconnected so often !! and for talking to people farther, one had to go the Public telephone booths or book trunkcall !!  When the dot.com bubble burst, many were swept out.   VSNL, Dishnet,  Now ISP,  Mantra Online – one may not remember or know them now …. they were the service providers for Dial-up connections, widely used a decade ago.

‘Wireless connections’  changed the way people access web.  The Wi-fi technology  uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet and network connections. Some say that  term Wi-Fi is not short for "wireless fidelity," but it actually  is  a trademarked phrase that means IEEE 802.11x.  Wi-Fi is defined as any "wireless local area network" (WLAN) product based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards". The debate over just how dangerous small electromagnetic signals are has been going on for years. Doctors in the United States launched an unofficial campaign last year to try and limit women’s exposure to phones, computers, microwave ovens and wireless equipment, claiming the radiation they emit poses a threat to developing babies.

The speed of your broadband (always-on, high-capacity, wide-bandwidth) internet connection has never been more critical. It's the pipe that connects your computers, tablets, handhelds, entertainment systems, and home automation tools, to the outside world—and to each other. Your connection must handle content that is critical for work, play, and keeping in touch. It has to back your modern-day communications, from simple text up to voice calls and video conferencing. And don't forget gaming: without the internet, your gaming would be just lonely, single-player action. All that requires the best speeds.

Internet service providers (ISPs), the companies that bring the high-speed broadband connections to your doorstep, have increased speeds in the last few years. The FCC re-defined broadband in 2015 to mean a minimum download speed of 25Mbps and upload speed of 3Mbps, up from 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up.  Competition would help even more.  There are entire cities now that can claim gigabit internet status—ISPs there, frequently municipally owned or a utility company, offer connections of 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) or more. That's 1,000 times better than 1Mbps speed, and 40 times what the FCC defines as broadband.   

Recently read a newsitem in MailOnline that Japan smashed the record for data transmission speed, achieving 319 terabits per second along a 1,864 mile-long optical cable - fast enough to transfer 10,000 HD movies in one second 

In July 2021, Japanese researchers achieved record breaking data transfer speeds through a long 1,864 mile optical cable, reaching a lightning fast 319 terabits per second. This is fast enough that you could transfer 10,000 high definition movies at about 4 Gigabytes each in just one second, although won't be available to the average home. This sort of technology is used in the back-end networks of broadband providers and then split up among hundreds or thousands of customers.  This new record smashes the previous best speed for data transfer over a long distance of 172 terabits per second, also set by a team from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications (NICT) in Tokyo. The new system is compatible with existing infrastructure, meaning networks could be easily upgraded, as the cable is the same size, the team explained.



Researchers say these sort of speeds will be necessary for back-end-infrastructure as services place ever greater demands on internet infrastructure, including through faster speeds from 5G networks, as well as the internet of things and streaming. Data is then transmitted using 'wavelength-division multiplexing', a technology that takes the data beamed by a laser and splits it into 552 channels. Unlike earlier generation amplifiers, these have been laced with rare Earth elements such as thulium and erbium as they act to excite ions and boost the signal strength.

Overall each channel was transmitting data at about 145 gigabit per second for each of the four cores, or about 580 gigabits per second for all cores combined. With 552 channels of transmission, this allowed them to achieve the record-setting 319 terabit speed. Despite all the extra cladding for the four cores, it has the same diameter as a standard single-core optical fibre cable.  They are now working to work to increase transmission capacity, extend the range and make it faster to match potential demand as the world moves beyond 5G.

Our understanding of 2G in India was very different and most of us without understanding the speed limits are happy posting in Social media and playing games on the net.

Happy WWW & Internet of Things

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
7th Aug 2021. 

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