5G is already significantly improving the mobile devices download & uploading speed, and internet satellite projects including SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper will make the internet greater accessible to people all around the world.
Although 5G speeds depend on several factors, in theory it allows users to reach speeds of up to 10 Gbps on their devices and enjoy latencies as less as one millisecond (ms); at 10Gbps, a user can download a huge 4K movie file in less than a minute.
Of course, there is still a long way to go before 5G reaches its upper limit. But what about the upper limit of the internet in general? Can we imagine the capabilities of 6G and beyond?
What is the current Internet speed limit?
In July last year, Japanese engineers broke the previous Internet speed record by nearly doubling it with a data transmission rate about 319 terabits per second (Tb/s).
The team that broke the record used existing fiber-optic infrastructure. it is critical to spotlight the fact that their record was feasible way to a few state-of-the-art add-ons. The researchers have used 4 advanced glass “cores” rather than the standard cores used for conventional data transmission, letting them attain the unprecedented speeds.
This means that integrating the brand-new system into existing infrastructure have to be less difficult than the previous record holder’s experimental photonic chip, say, however it might still require a large and expensive infrastructure overhaul. For our purposes, it is crucial to focus on that internet connections for ordinary customers presently max out at 10 Gb/s for home internet.
Is there an overall “speed limit” for the internet and electronic devices?
Still, speeds shown withinside the laboratory will finally come to consumers and we can, and will, go beyond 319 Tb/s internet speed record set by the researchers in Japan previous year. As a post through RCRWireless points out, there are 2 predominant methods researchers can push the bandwidth limit to new heights: thicker cables with tens of thousands of strands, multiplying the quantity of data carried through orders of magnitude and pushing transmission frequencies greater into the electromagnetic spectrum, also to ultraviolet radiation and probably beyond.
Beyond that, the last stumbling block for the internet and electronic devices will probably be an as yet-unknown not surpassable technological hurdle. In theory, the internet ought to run as fast as the speed of light, which means it can cap out on the equal speed limit as optoelectronics devices. These use light to manage electricity, making them the fastest electronics gadgets in the world.
Last month, the researchers from TU Wien, TU Graz, and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, determined the ultimate speed limit for optoelectronics, the factor by which the laws of quantum mechanics prevent microchips from turning into any faster. Using state-of-the-art lasers and advanced computer modeling, the global group of scientists discovered that the upper-speed limit of optoelectronics is one Petahertz, that is equal to a million Gigahertz. To move any faster might be to break the laws of quantum physics. The researchers said that unknown technological hurdles will probably impede us from ever attaining that speed.
So, while the upper speed limit of the internet is, in theory, similar to the speed of light, technology will probably max out before we are able to get everywhere close to it. As a factor of reference, fiber optic cables attain approximately two-thirds the speed of light in a vacuum. That’s nonetheless surprisingly impressive, or even maxing out the potential of fiber optic will bring change on an unprecedented global scale.
