Download all of Netflix in one second? Japan’s new internet speed makes it possible

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What if you could download every single movie and show on Netflix in just one second? No loading screens, no buffering, no “Your internet is unstable” pop-ups. Sounds like something from the future, right? But it’s already a reality in Japan.

A team of researchers in Japan has just set a new world record for internet speed. They reached a mind-boggling speed of 1.02 petabits per second. That’s fast enough to download the entire Netflix library, 8K videos, or even all of Wikipedia thousands of times over in just one second.

To give you an idea of how fast that really is, it’s about 16 million times faster than India’s average internet speed and 3.5 million times faster than what people in the US usually get.

This breakthrough came from scientists at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, or NICT. They worked with Sumitomo Electric and a group of international researchers to create a super high-speed network using fiber optic cables. But here’s the cool part,  the cable they used is the same size as the ones we already use today. The difference is on the inside. Instead of a single core, it has 19 cores, which means it can carry a lot more data at once.

Using these special cables, the team was able to send massive amounts of data across a distance of over 1,800 kilometers, without any loss in speed. They used a clever setup with transmitters, receivers, and looping circuits that helped keep the data flowing at full power.

The project proves that ultra-fast internet might not be so far away for the rest of us. Since these cables are the same size as current ones, it’s possible that with some upgrades, this kind of internet could work with existing infrastructure in the future.

For now, while the rest of the world still waits for large files to download or streams to buffer, Japan is quietly showing us what the internet of tomorrow could look like — instant, smooth, and lightning fast