Players and thousands of services benefit from a new technology successfully tested by Vodafone and Nokia

2024-04-03 15:36:00, Aktualitet CNA

Players and thousands of services benefit from a new technology successfully

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A new internet technology, which can significantly improve the internet experience at home for customers, especially when playing games or making video calls, has been successfully tested by Vodafone and Nokia.

By using an imitation of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) internet connection technology instead of a busy Wi-Fi line to provide internet to a standard laptop, the two companies managed to speed up the time response time when connecting to a website, known as latency, from 550 milliseconds (0.55 seconds) to 12
milliseconds (0.012 seconds), while maintaining Internet speed.

Latency was reduced to just 1.05 milliseconds (0.00105 seconds) when Ethernet cable was used instead of Wi-Fi. Latency of 100 milliseconds or more, which is thought to be equivalent to the blink of an eye, can cause a noticeable slowdown during electronic games or during a video call.

In a first-of-its-kind test at Vodafone's lab in Newbury, UK, using all the elements of a fiber broadband network, Vodafone and Nokia's research lab, Nokia Bell Labs, were able to prove the benefits of a the new Internet standard, called L4S, in passing large amounts of data (customer traffic) and a low latency.

L4S technology, brought for the first time by Nokia Bell Labs, means "Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable throughput", i.e. data traffic with "Low Latency, Low Loss and Scalable".

Backed by the Internet's leading standards body the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), this technology addresses queuing delays, which are a significant source of peak Internet latency and the biggest enemy of hardcore gamers. . Latency occurs when data packets wait in buffers throughout the network, for example at routers and modems, before being forwarded to their destination.

Gavin Young, Head of Fixed Access Center of Excellence at Vodafone says: “As a leading broadband provider, Vodafone aims to provide customers with a faster, more responsive and reliable service. , without delays even during peak hours.

L4S is an exciting technology with great potential to achieve this goal and provide a more interactive and immersive online experience for our customers.”

While the Vodafone and Nokia Bell Labs tests were conducted using Passive Optical Network (PON), the underlying technology for fiber-to-the-home broadband services, L4S can also be used for any access connection, mobile or fixed.

It can be applied to any application where latency is critical, such as remote surgery, connected autonomous vehicles, and smart factories that augment the Industrial Internet.

These very encouraging results show that L4S will liberate any real-time application that is normally limited by high latency. Video conferencing, cloud gaming, augmented reality and even remote control of drones would work perfectly on the Internet if significant delays did not exist.

Therefore this technology, where Vodafone has made its contribution, is excellent news in a world that is always more dependent on interconnection and quality, fast and uninterrupted internet./CNA