That makes it possible to achieve this speed using existing fiber optic cables, simply by upgrading the amplifiers.
Furthermore, they developed new Geometric Shaping constellations, which are the properties of the light sent through the fiber optic line, that are optimized for this bandwidth. This 178Tbps connection utilizes a much broader 16.8THz of bandwidth, which allows for far higher throughput. Some specialized 9THz bandwidth commercial lines are just starting to be deployed. Most fiber optic infrastructure today is designed for a bandwidth of 4.5THz. The UCL engineers were able to achieve those blistering speeds by dramatically increasing the bandwidth used in their fiber optic transmissions. It’s also 178,000 times faster than the gigabit internet that is the fastest option for most Americans. According to the press release, that’s a fifth faster than the previous record. But what isn’t disputed is that 178 Tbit/s is very fast. It’s also worth noting that Netflix doesn’t have any official statement on how much space their library takes up, and the 100TB figure is just an estimate for every available video in HD format. The University College of London press release for this research states that the Netflix library could be downloaded in under a second, but that seems to be a mistake - likely due to a misunderstanding of the difference between a terabytes and terabits. But engineers from UCL have managed to set a new internet speed record of 178 terabits per second, which would make it possible to download the Netflix library in less than five seconds. Downloading the entire Netflix library, which is roughly 100TB, would take nearly 453 years. Downloading a single DVD on a 56k connection, even if it was performing perfectly, would take more than a week. HD video was pretty much out of the question. These results seem quite accurate compared. If you’re old enough to remember the days of 56k modems and dial-up internet, you know how painfully slow it was just to download a photo or a low-quality MP3. The average ping clocked in at 13 ms, with mean download and upload speeds of 153.3 Mbps and 5.6 Mbps respectively.