The World's Fastest Wi-Fi Makes Google Fiber Look Like Dial-Up

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Everybody hates wires, but if you want crazy speed, they're the way to go. But maybe not anymore. A team of German scientists have developed record-setting Wi-Fi that cooks right along at 100 Gigabits per second. You know, like Google Fiber but times 100.

The tech was developed by a joint team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and this isn't their first record. They already set one for the world's fastest Wi-Fi with a 40Gbps connection a few months ago. These guys are legit.

 

Like the previous 40Gbps tech, this new 100Gbps version uses some super high-frequency signals (237.5 GHz) that let you really pack in the data. At 100Gbps, for instance, you can transmit a whole Blu-ray of data in two seconds flat. The catch is that high-frequency signals like this aren't very good at going through walls like the low frequency ones your average router spits out. So you wind up with something less like a dome of coverage and something more like an invisible cable where the ends need to be able to see each other.

Previously, IAF and KIT's tech was tested to blast data between the peaks of skyscrapers, and this new version could serve as a bad-ass, cheap, and modular framework for patching holes in fiber lines and bringing high-speed internet to places where it's too cost prohibitive or obnoxious to lay down a ton more fiber infrastructure. Which is to say, a lot of places.

But the best part is, this record probably won't stand for long. According to Swen König, one of the researchers on the project:

    By employing optical and electrical multiplexing techniques, i.e., by simultaneously transmitting multiple data streams, and by using multiple transmitting and receiving antennas, the data rate could be multiplied. Hence, radio systems having a data rate of 1 terabit per second appear to be feasible.

Now just put that in my living room and we'll really be in business.