By Jim Pilgrim
It doesn’t get any better than glass and light, right?
Einstein theorized nothing can exceed the speed of light.
Recently, some theoretical physicists are disputing that.
Matched/paired atoms on opposite sides of the earth have been proven to react simultaneously when one or the other is stimulated. Instant communication, pretty cool. That’s Quantum physics. Einstein called it “scary science”. Niels Bohr and Albert disagreed on this “Principle of Indeterminacy”.
Anyway, sorry about my digression. Back to light and glass. It’s as good as it gets right now, at least in our “practical” non- Quantum world.
Time division multiplexing (TDM) has come a long way over the years. When I worked for US West in the mid 80s, we had many 135mb/s fiber terminals. It wasn’t long and we were able to get that light to turn on and off at 2.4 gb/s. Now we are at 10 gig, 40 gig. Some scientists say we are getting near pegging the needle on TDM. Only can turn that light on and off so fast and still determine whether it’s a one or a zero!
Our future is in WDM. Scientists say there is no limit to how close we can space DWDM. 50 GHz, 25 GHz, 12.5 GHz spacing, essentially double the bandwidth that can be carried on a single fiber. 40 GB/s TDM on each of thousands of different wavelengths.
I have started to hear rumblings about WDM-PON here in the US. It will probably migrate to a hybrid WDM PON sometime in the future when we need it.
Glass and Light the Perfect Carrier to “carry” us into the future.