Think your 802.11ac router is pretty amazing? It’s got nothing on a new system created by the Franhofer Institute and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, which recently completed a 100Gbps data transmission.
That’s roughly fourteen times faster than the most robust 802.11ac equipment can manage. But there is a catch. The research team’s success came in a laboratory environment and took place over a distance of just 20 meters with no obstructions. That doesn’t make the fact that the team sent and received the equivalent of a full Blu-ray disc of data in two seconds any less impressive, of course.
It’s amazing to think that what Fraunhofer and KIT have done here will vastly improve rural Internet access — and even dramatically speed up our in-home Wi-Fi networks in the near future. The reality will be much different, though.
For starters, the design is better suited as a replacement for commercial WANs — specifically remote office links that use microwave transmitters today. The 237.5GHz signal wouldn’t be great at penetrating walls, but it’s well-suited to line-of-site networking.
Beyond that, proof-of-concept setups like this one never make it to market in their pure forms. Trade-offs have to be made in order to get the tech out there, and incumbent ISPs are rarely eager to spend money on new technology without making absolutely sure they’ve squeezed every last dime out of the old first. Just look at how long it took for DSL to go from the lab to the Average Joe’s residence.
