FOR COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS, bandwidth has long been king. With every generation of fiber optic, cellular, or Wi-Fi technology has come a jump in throughput that has enriched our online lives. Twenty years ago we were merely exchanging texts on our phones, but we now think nothing of streaming videos from YouTube and Netflix. No wonder, then, that video now consumes up to 60 percent of Internet bandwidth. If this trend continues, we might yet see full-motion holography delivered to our mobiles—a techie dream since Princess Leia's plea for help in Star Wars. • Recently, though, high bandwidth has begun to share the spotlight with a different metric of merit: low latency. The amount of latency varies drastically depending on how far in a network a signal travels, how many routers it passes through, whether it uses a wired or wireless connection, and so on. The typical latency in a 4G network, for example, is 50 milliseconds. Reducing latency to 10 milliseconds, as 5G and Wi-Fi are currently doing, opens the door to a whole slew of applications that high bandwidth alone cannot. With virtual-reality headsets, for example, a delay of more than about 10 milliseconds in rendering and displaying images in response to head movement is very perceptible, and it leads to a disorienting experience that is for some akin to seasickness. • Multiplayer games, autonomous vehicles, and factory robots also need extremely low latencies. Even as 5G and Wi-Fi make 10 milliseconds the new standard for latency, researchers, like my group at New York University's NYU Wireless research center, are already working hard on another order-of-magnitude reduction, to about 1 millisecond or less. • Pushing latencies down to 1 millisecond will require reengineering every step of the communications process. In the past, engineers have ignored sources of minuscule delay because they were inconsequential to the overall latency. Now, researchers will have to develop new methods for encoding, transmitting, and routing data to shave off even the smallest sources of delay. And immutable laws of physics—specifically the speed of light—will dictate firm restrictions on what networks with 1-millisecond latencies will look like. There's no one-size-fits-all technique that will enable these extremely low-latency networks. Only by combining solutions to all these sources of latency will it be possible to build networks where time is never wasted.

中文翻译：

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打破毫秒级障碍：机器人和自动驾驶汽车将需要完全重新设计的网络

对于通信网络，带宽一直是王道。随着每一代光纤、蜂窝或 Wi-Fi 技术的发展，吞吐量都出现了飞跃，丰富了我们的在线生活。二十年前，我们只是在手机上交换文本，但现在我们不考虑来自 YouTube 和 Netflix 的流媒体视频。因此，难怪该视频现在占用了互联网带宽的 60%。如果这种趋势继续下去，我们可能还会看到全动态全息技术传送到我们的手机上——自从莱娅公主在星球大战中寻求帮助以来，这是一个技术人员的梦想。• 不过，最近，高带宽开始以不同的优点衡量标准：低延迟。延迟量会因信号在网络中传播的距离、经过的路由器数量、使用有线还是无线连接而有很大差异，等等。例如，4G 网络中的典型延迟为 50 毫秒。将延迟降低到 10 毫秒，正如 5G 和 Wi-Fi 目前所做的那样，为大量应用打开了大门，而这些应用仅靠高带宽是无法实现的。例如，对于虚拟现实耳机，响应头部运动而渲染和显示图像的延迟超过大约 10 毫秒是非常明显的，并且会导致类似于晕船的迷失体验。• 多人游戏、自动驾驶汽车和工厂机器人也需要极低的延迟。即使 5G 和 Wi-Fi 使 10 毫秒成为延迟的新标准，研究人员，就像我在纽约大学纽约大学无线研究中心的小组一样，已经在努力将另一个数量级降低到大约 1 毫秒或更短。• 将延迟降低到 1 毫秒将需要重新设计通信流程的每一步。过去，工程师忽略了微小延迟的来源，因为它们对整体延迟无关紧要。现在，研究人员将不得不开发用于编码、传输和路由数据的新方法，以消除即使是最小的延迟源。不可改变的物理定律——特别是光速——将严格限制具有 1 毫秒延迟的网络的外观。没有一种万能的技术可以实现这些极低延迟的网络。只有将所有这些延迟源的解决方案结合起来，才有可能构建永远不会浪费时间的网络。工程师忽略了微小延迟的来源，因为它们对整体延迟无关紧要。现在，研究人员将不得不开发用于编码、传输和路由数据的新方法，以消除即使是最小的延迟源。不可改变的物理定律——特别是光速——将严格限制具有 1 毫秒延迟的网络的外观。没有一种万能的技术可以实现这些极低延迟的网络。只有将所有这些延迟源的解决方案结合起来，才有可能构建永远不会浪费时间的网络。工程师忽略了微小延迟的来源，因为它们对整体延迟无关紧要。现在，研究人员将不得不开发用于编码、传输和路由数据的新方法，以消除即使是最小的延迟源。不可改变的物理定律——特别是光速——将严格限制具有 1 毫秒延迟的网络的外观。没有一种万能的技术可以实现这些极低延迟的网络。只有将所有这些延迟源的解决方案结合起来，才有可能构建永远不会浪费时间的网络。并路由数据以消除即使是最小的延迟源。不可改变的物理定律——特别是光速——将严格限制具有 1 毫秒延迟的网络的外观。没有一种万能的技术可以实现这些极低延迟的网络。只有将所有这些延迟源的解决方案结合起来，才有可能构建永远不会浪费时间的网络。并路由数据以消除即使是最小的延迟源。不可改变的物理定律——特别是光速——将严格限制具有 1 毫秒延迟的网络的外观。没有一种万能的技术可以实现这些极低延迟的网络。只有将所有这些延迟源的解决方案结合起来，才有可能构建永远不会浪费时间的网络。