Squeezing More Bandwidth Out of Fiber

EigenHombre writes "The New York Times reports on efforts underway to squeeze more bandwidth out of the fiber optic connections which form the backbone of the Internet. With traffic doubling every two years, the limits of current networks are getting close to saturating. The new technology from Lucent-Alcatel uses the polarization and phase of light (in addition to intensity) to double or quadruple current speeds."

Ahh, the old Star Trek maneuver

[Anonymous Coward]

Reverse the polarity! Phase variance!

If you squeeze glass it flows

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pump too much data into a fiber optic glass, it will begin to flow under the photonic pressure similar to glass in old church windows. If you look at them, the bottoms are much thicker than at the top. The reason? All that knowledge from God in Heaven up in the sky exerts a downward pressure on churches in particular warping their window glass... the same thing will happen to fiber optics. If you put too many libraries of congress through it, it will start to flow like toothpaste and your computer rooms will have a sticky floor and all your network switches will be gooey.

Thanks
Signed,
Mr KnowItAll.
(Happy Thanksgiving by the way)

Re:Hmmm...

[nacturation]

Or figure out a way of getting cyber criminals off the net. The problem for quite some time has been that they'll suck up as much bandwidth as they can get, and since they don't pay for it, there's little reason to actually throttle back their operations.

Shut down The Pirate Bay? :)

Re:Wtf are constants?

[Mitchell314]

We could if we had the source code files.

Re:Hmmm...

[T Murphy]

So when people go online, the ISP should pop up a EULA saying you can only use the internet for legal activity. Problem solved.

Re:Hmmm...

[John Hasler]

Or just get rid of network neutrality so that ISPs can filter packets with the evil bit set.

Re:what about color

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop the presses! An anonymous poster on the internet came up with an idea that has baffled teams of physicists for decades!

Re:Hmmm...

[morgan_greywolf]

A couple of GBU-31s and an F-22 Raptor ought to fix that...

Re:Hmmm...

[espiesp]

I just don't think that the content has added much of anything actually useful.

Riiiiight. And this post is SOOO useful. Time to get off your high horse and shovel some manure.

Re:If you squeeze glass it flows

[Belial6]

Damn! Don't tell people that. I've been telling them that the reason that the windows in my house "flow" sideways is because the conservatives that live to the left of me are so dense, and the liberals that live to the right of me are so vacuous that it creates a sideways gravitational pull that makes my windows flow sideways.