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While people in most parts of the world still struggle to stream YouTube videos, Denmark has managed to successfully transfer data over a 43Tbps network connection.

Using state of the art multi-core fiber technology, a research group working at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has achieved speeds of up to 43Tbps*. In other words that is 5300GBps (Gigabytes/second). For comparison’s sake, note that the average internet connection speed in USA is 10Mbps. It is safe to say it may take a decade or two before we enjoy these speeds at home.

Theoretically, having DTU’s connection in your residence would mean being able to download a full-length 1080p HD movie – usually around 10GB in size – in literally less than a blink of the eye.

It is important to note that DTU did this over a single-laser-single-fiber connection, which is what is currently being used in big fat pipes that form much of the Internet infrastructure. DTU’s implementation is more easily implementable in the real-world, compared to other lab experiments.

We look forward to a future where file-download times will be in milli- and microseceonds. Transferring your files in the cloud will be faster** than local transfers today – it will change personal computing as we know it!

Source: ExtremeTech

*Remember! Your Internet Service Provider uses bits (b) as opposed to bytes (B) for marketing connection speeds. So your 8Mbps connection is really a 1MBps connection!

**One of the fastest connectivity standards in use today – USB 3.0 – has a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 5Gbps. 8,000 times slower than what DTU achieved in the lab.