Tuning up the Internet

As much as people love watching pet videos or sending wedding photos over the Internet, they’re frustrated by slow transmission speeds. Now, Canadian researchers have invented a way to transmit optical information as much as six times faster while using less energy.

At Université Laval in Québec, engineers have created an electronic component called a “tunable filter” that responds up to six times faster to a wider range of fluctuating data signals than today’s filters do. It also does a better job of screening out noise and is silicon-based, meaning that it can easily work with current computer technology.