40 gigabits per second over 1300km? Too easy in Australia.

Australia’s Academic Research Network and Cisco have achieved data transfer speeds of 40 gigabits per second between three sites over 1300km.

The three sites are CSIRO astronomy locations in Parkes, Narrabri and Marsfield, and the trial hopes to convince those determining the location of the Square Kilometre Array that Australia has the infrastructure required to handle the project.

The feat apparently required few hardware upgrades. AARNet has also been trialing 100Gbps solutions. Both trials have been conducted on the organization’s existing fiber network.

In contrast, the NBN — which services consumers and businesses, not science organizations moving massive amounts of data around — hopes to reach 100Mbps, and that’s a peak speed.