1:30 PM -- Researchers from Australia's Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) , Denmark Technical University , and China's Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics are claiming success in a Terabit Ethernet experiment, although they say real products are still years away.

The result, noted today by Ars Technica, is published in a journal appropriately named Optics Express.

They haven't cracked Terabit Ethernet completely. What they've done is show that it's possible to receive and demultiplex such signals, using (if I'm reading this correctly) waveguides carved into arsenic trisulfide (As₂S₃).

Bob Metcalfe, the Father of Ethernet, talked about Terabit Ethernet last year at OFC/NFOEC, citing the need for a whole new infrastructure all the way down to new materials and fiber. (See Metcalfe Pitches Terabit Ethernet and OFC: Terabit Explained.) Apparently, someone was paying attention.

Hear Metcalfe talk terabit in his own words:

{videoembed|146223} — Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading