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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

John Cioffi, known as the “father of DSL”, reckons we're nowhere near the limit of copper transmission speed [theregister.co.uk], delivering a presentation claiming Terabit performance is feasible.

Feasible with a bunch of caveats, that is, the two most important of which are “if research delivers on theory”, and “if it can be standardised”.

The basis of Cioffi's proposal in this PDF presentation [assia-inc.com] is that at high enough frequencies, signals in copper behave differently to at low frequencies.

At the kinds of frequencies we use for today's DSL, the signal is carried by the movement of electrons in the wires. If, however, the carrier frequency is high enough, the waves propagate in a “waveguide” mode – radio waves following the edge of the copper, rather than electrons oscillating inside it.

So far, so good: none of this is science fiction, and in fact, AT&T's fooling around with using wires as waveguides in its AirGig demonstration [theregister.co.uk].

Original Submission