Contrary to the "highlights" section (which seems to be the only place calling it a "standard" 19-core optical fiber), this is not in fact a 'standard' fiber, rather the origin seems to be the standard (125µm) diameter ("Sumitomo Electric was responsible for the design and manufacture of a coupled 19-core optical fiber with a standard cladding diameter (see Figure 1)"). Looks like the "diameter" simply got lost for the highlights section.
(Nonetheless impressive, and multi-core fiber seems to be maturing as technology.)
Interesting work, but 19 cores is very much not standard. Multiples of 12 cores are the gold standard in the telecommunications industry. Ribbon fibre is typically 12, sometimes 24 fibres per ribbon, and high count cables these days are 864 cores or more using a more flexible ribbon structure that improves density while still using standard tooling.
As others have mentioned, this is mostly a proof of concept for a high core count weakly-coupled fibre from Sumitomo. I also want to highlight the use of a 19 channels MIMO receiver structure which is completely impractical. The linked article also fails to mention a figure for MIMO gain.
The NANOG has had a regular presentation by Richard Steenbergen called "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical Networking – But Were Afraid to Ask"; last year's:
How come with a LAG group on ethernet, I can get "more total bandwidth", but any single TCP flow is limited to the max speed of one of the LAG Components (gigabit lets say), but then these guys are somehow combining multiple fibers into an overall faster stream? What gives? Even round robin mode on LAG groups doesn't do that.
What are they doing differently and why can't we do that?
while fascinating I'm still waiting for that transformative move from electrical. Whichever optical route you're taking, at the beginning and at the end of it has to be an electrical conversion which hinders speed, consumes power and produces (sometimes tons of) heat. Wen optical switching?
8 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 29.5 ms ] thread(Nonetheless impressive, and multi-core fiber seems to be maturing as technology.)
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-MfLsnqluM
How come with a LAG group on ethernet, I can get "more total bandwidth", but any single TCP flow is limited to the max speed of one of the LAG Components (gigabit lets say), but then these guys are somehow combining multiple fibers into an overall faster stream? What gives? Even round robin mode on LAG groups doesn't do that.
What are they doing differently and why can't we do that?