back to article Nokia blasts 250 Gbps across Atlantic in optical test for Facebook

Nokia has lit up a trans-Atlantic fibre for Facebook, in a field trial that showed off 200 Gbps and 250 Gbps wavelengths on a 5,500 km link. According to Nokia, applying a technique from Bell Labs called probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) yielded a 2.5x increase in the rated capacity of the New York-Ireland cable used …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    "PCS will let the cable handle as much as 32 Tbps per fibre in the future"

    Wonderful. Brilliant.

    Can I finally get a 100mbps connection then ?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT would probably stick a piece of Copper on it either end, give results as "up to" 250Gbps

    BT/Clive Selley* would probably leave/stick a piece of "cheaper" copper on it either end between the transatlantic cable and the landing station, stating the results as 'up to' 250GBps, to restrict access/keep control and prevent only one CP (BT) at a time.

    Well, given that's how they BT seem to operate, endorsed by Ofcom. Ofcom "We don't care about the underlying technology how its achieved" fcuking nonsense.

    *has skewed belief in Pointless G.fast (having overseen its development), conveniently parachuted into Openreach before Ofcom's structural separation, by BT, for BT.

    1. Blotto Silver badge

      Re: BT would probably stick a piece of Copper on it either end, give results as "up to" 250Gbps

      Have you got some non copper based router or computer that you can stick on either end?

      It must go to copper somewhere.

      Even if you have fast bb, most people will just stick slow wifi on it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: BT would probably stick a piece of Copper on it either end, give results as "up to" 250Gbps

        Blotto, Water companies could drip feed their rural customers though up-ended bottles attached to front doors of houses, like Gerbils, if you take that all encompassing BT apologist approach.

        There appears nothing in BT ultrafast plans delivers "up to" Ultrafast fairly/equally, to premises including those with lines greater than 500m.

        You can say what you want, but the undersea Transatlantic Fibre cable, linked by "up to" copper to the landing station analogy above hits the nail on the head regards BT/Ofcom ridiculous approach to BT's Ultrafast Broadband future rollout.

        It's completely biased thinking by BT folk in favour of BT' legacy copper carcass network, endorsed by "revolving doors" Ex-BT employees seconded into key jobs at Ofcom. That's pretty much how the regulation system works, to favour BT's entrenched position.

      2. Kernel

        Re: BT would probably stick a piece of Copper on it either end, give results as "up to" 250Gbps

        "Have you got some non copper based router or computer that you can stick on either end?"

        Interesting enough, yes, I do.

        Nokia's 1830PSS product line has a range of optical router cards as an off the shelf item that are able to extract and switch one or more wavelengths to/from a specific path. There's no technical requirement to convert the optical signal to electrical until you hit a router inside some cable customer telco's network.

        This means that wavelengths coming in off the cable can be switched to the different cable customers at the landing station without any requirement to be dropped back to electrical .

      3. astounded1

        Re: BT would probably stick a piece of Copper on it either end, give results as "up to" 250Gbps

        It does not have to go to copper if engineering at the landing stations allows it to move onward to responsible network operators who understand they have no option but to go O-O-O as far to the edge as possible.

        Oh, sorry. You were talking about BT...Never mind.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Faecebook

    Never, in the field of human communication, has so much been said by so many to so few and so much of it being pure bollocks

  4. Pen-y-gors

    No-one will ever need 32 Tbps per fibre...

    Okay, we may need a bit more capacity to stream cat pictures and porn via an Icelandic VPN, but 32Tbps? per fibre?

    Actually, I'm wrong. This actually reveals some very secret research into Teleportation. Some bright spark has got hold of and developed alien technology to allow physical objects (people) to be broken down into a very, very large datastream and transmitted to distant places where they are re-constituted (almost) perfectly. Instant international travel AND you can take your laptop. Hence the need for silly capacity.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. DaLo
    FAIL

    "...200 Gbps and 250 Gbps wavelengths..."

    Interesting measure of wavelengths.

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge
      Boffin

      Yes, well, there are multiple wavelengths of light that each carry different amounts of data which has been abbreviated to simplify for those less well versed in the mechanics of fibre optics.

      1. DaLo

        If you abbreviate a sentence so that it becomes nonsense then I would suggest the abbreviated form is not a good one.

        How about "... in a field trial that showed off 200 Gbps and 250 Gbps using different wavelengths on a 5,500 km link"?

        1. ArrZarr Silver badge

          That would be valid and less confusing for somebody of a technical disposition, sure.

          However, if explaining this to the PHB for a press release, I would dumb it down to the 250Gbps wavelength form as the practical effect is that you have a single wavelength that allows 250Gbps to be transmitted.

    2. Kernel

      I work with Nokia DWDM equipment, using what are referred to as 10Gbps, 100Gbps and 200Gbps wavelengths - but that has nothing to do with the wavelength (or 'colour', if you prefer) of the infra-red lasers. The terms come about because they refer to the transmission capacity of the transponder card that converts from B&W to a specific colour.

      Changing from 10Gbps to 100Gbps is just a matter of changing out the transponder at each end of the lambda - in fact, with some transponders, changing from 100Gbps to 200Gbps is simply a matter of clicking an option in the transponder setup page and connecting a second 100Gbps B&W input to the second client port, at which time the single coloured output will move from being a 100Gbps wavelength to a 200Gbps wavelength - but still the same actual wavelength and occupying the same bandwidth, just carrying twice as much data.

      1. ArrZarr Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Thanks for the information, very interesting.

  6. earl grey
    Holmes

    Looks like a good step

    So Nokia scooping up Alcatel wasn't a total waste of time and money.

  7. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Is "nonlearity" a word?

    Don't fret, I'll go click the Typo button too.

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