The Internet 100 Times Faster

A new technique for transferring data across fiber-optic lines could increase the speed of the Internet by 100 times because information need never be converted into electrical signals. The technique being developed by MIT, which is already used to some extent, is called “flow switching”. “In a flow-switching network, the allotment of bandwidth would change constantly. As traffic between New York and Los Angeles increased, new, dedicated wavelengths would be recruited to handle it; as the traffic tailed off, the wavelengths would be relinquished. Chan and his colleagues have developed network management protocols that can perform these reallocations in a matter of seconds.”