More bytes in less time

WASHINGTON, JUNE 17. A Taiwanese businessman, Dr. Ding-Yuan Yang (52), has devised a way to increase the speed of transmission of internet information from megabytes to gigabytes on an ordinary personal computer, according to a Washington Post report.

To achieve this, the Princeton and Stanford Business School- educated Dr. Ding has used a glass cable with a coating developed by Minneapolis-based Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.

U.S., German and Japanese firms are also working on the problem but Dr. Ding has beat them to the finish line.

Information on the internet moves as light pulses along fibre optic cables at many gigabytes but once it reaches buildings or local switching stations, that information gets off the fibre optics line into the much slower copper wire. Gigabytes then become megabytes. Frames freeze and downloading can seem to take forever.

Dr. Ding, who heads a consortium of 14 Taiwanese companies, and his team say that this last stage has kept users from an explosion of opportunity from downloading a movie in seconds to moving high resolution medical images at the touch of a switch.

To link the copper wires in most desktop computers to the high- speed lines, the consortium is manufacturing another product called VF-45.

This switch can turn the electric signals running along copper wires into light pulses that moves on fibre optic lines. Snap it into your computer and you will be measuring your speed in ``gigs'' not ``megs'', says Dr. Ding.

- PTI

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Section  : International
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