Japanese researchers set a new world record with an internet speed of 319 terabytes per second.

A team of researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT) in Japan has broken the old internet speed record of 178 terabytes per second. The new record? An amazing speed of 319 terabits per second. It took a little creativity and tweaking to get it working, but the good news is that the new fiber optics are compatible with existing equipment, which means it might not be too difficult to update your existing lines.

To achieve this feat, the researchers (led by Benjamin J. Putnam) built a transmission system that fully utilizes wavelength division multiplexing technology by combining different amplification techniques.

Its quad-core optical fiber (with a standard outer diameter of 0.125 mm) spanned 69.8 km and was coiled 43 times for a final transmission distance of 3,001 km, or about 1,865 miles.

The research paper on this issue goes into more detail if you’re into that sort of thing, and it includes the use of rare earth ions and lasers. It sounds complicated and cool at the same time, assuming you can of course figure it all out.

“The combined transmission bandwidth >120 nm allowed 552 wavelength-division multiplexing channels by adopting two types of saturated fiber amplifiers in addition to distributed Raman amplification, to allow recycling of signal transmission to broadband.”

The team said the optical fibers used could be linked to existing equipment. The hope, they added, is that this breakthrough will enable adequately high-speed data transmission in the near future, possibly as a next step beyond 5G.