Imagine that you be able to download everything on Netflix in just one second. This may look futuristic, but in real life you may not have to wait 20-30 years to see it. This large -scale internet speed limit is exactly what researchers in Japan have managed to get. Scientists from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have set a new world record for internet speed, which reaches 1.02 petbits per second.

Most of us measure internet speed per second (MBPS). A petabit is equal to a million gigabits – or a billion megabits. So this new record is about 1,020,000,000 Mbps. For comparison, the average internet speed in the United States is about 300 Mbps, while in India it is close to 64 Mbps. This new speed is faster and faster millions of times to download the entire content of Netflix under a second.

Fast speed on existing infrastructure

So, how did the researchers manage to close it? According to NICT, his research team used a special type of optical fiber with 19 core. It contains 19 small channels that can carry each data. Generally, a fiber-optic cable has just one core, but these experimental cables multiply, without increasing the overall size of the cable, multiply the amount of data. In fact, the cable used in the experiment is the same standard size (only 0.125 mm thick) which is used globally today.

Data sent at a distance of thousands of miles

In particular, this test was not limited to a short distance. Researchers sent more than 1,808 kilometers (about 1,123 mi) data, using a setup that looped the signal through 19 different circuits, every 86.1 km long. A total of 180 data sections were transmitted simultaneously, resulting in a bandwidth of 1.86 exits per second.

“Our goal was to showcase that incredibly rapid internet speed can be achieved using infrastructure that already exist,” NICT said.

Real world prospects

Now, if you are wondering what kind of real world functions can benefit at this pace-big think. Really big. From downloading the entire English version of Wikipedia (with all the modifications) thousands of times per second, 8K ultra-high-defusion videos immediately to stream the video, the possibilities with this massive internet speed are endless. In the future, high-demonstrations will benefit greatly from this internet pace to cloud computing, AI model training, large-scale distance cooperation, and global data storage systems.

In particular, while this technique is still in the phase of research and development, the fact that it uses standard-shaped fiber cables, makes the implementation of the real world more possible in the near future. For now, there is no specific timeline for public rollouts, but the record provides a glimpse in the future of internet connectivity.