Past one terabit/second on fiber

[jim bell]

At 11:10 AM 5/15/96 -0400, brian dodds wrote:
>On Tue, 14 May 1996, jim bell wrote:
>
>> But with 
>> fiber transmission probably less than 1/100th the cost of older coaxial 
>> transmission systems, per connection, it is unclear why they're even 
>> continuing to meter LD phone calls.  
>
>especially when 1Tb fiber is in practice - our phone calls will take only 
>nanoseconds! :)

Reminds me of an old joke:  "This computer's so fast it does an infinite 
loop in 5 seconds!"

>anything included in that as to why they used a dfb laser for channel 16? 
>or is it something obvious i'm missing?

They probably just wanted to establish that it could be done, to show that 
this wasn't dependant on high-cost laser systems.  External cavity lasers 
raise cost and size substantially, but in a laboratory setting they're the 
most convenient to use.

 
>i notice they're still using the encyclopedia/second benchmark..

It's an old habit, I suppose.  It's hard to explain "one trillion", at least 
to non-tech types.  A good modern replacement might be to say, "200 CDROM's 
per second", except that even today most people don't know how much storage 
a CDROM represents.  "16 million one-way phone calls" is also helpful as a 
benchmark.

Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com