Butters' Law - Networks Keep Getting Faster

Moore's Law (see the Tip of the Night for April 19, 2015), and Kryder's Law (see the Tip of the Night for May 11, 2015) are fairly well know.

Less well known in Butters' Law. This states that the amount of data that can be transmitted by an optic fiber will double every 9 months. So, the cost of networking should be consistently coming down, even if service providers cannot rewire networks quickly enough to keep pace with Butters' Law. Fiber optics, or photonics, send laser signals through glass fibers. The more wavelengths that can be transmitted, the faster the network speed. Wavelength-division-multiplexing allows a single fiber to carry different wavelengths of light.

Gradually speeds of 5 MBs per second on home networks are being surpassed by networks that can handle 100 MBs per second or more.