Networks and Telecommunications

A cable with binary emerging

Linking the world

Networks now link the world, but how they do it so well has taken ingenuity. Electrical engineers and computer scientists have built them and are still finding ways to improve them, allowing ever more data to quickly travel the world.

Without the networks beneath them all the applications we now expect: phones, video sharing, social media, streaming, games, banking and more couldn’t exist.

The Optical Pony Express

2 cowboys riding hard on the horizon

Suppose you want to send messages as fast as possible. What’s the best way to do it? By light in optical networks, but even then with innovation you can speed things up…(Read on)

How Madonna crashed the Internet

An empty mike bathed in light

When Madonna took to the stage at Brixton Academy in 2001 she made Internet history and caused more that a little Internet misery. Her concert was live streamed over the Internet. A record-breaking audience of 9 million tuned in, and that’s where the trouble started…(read on)

Why is your Internet so slow

lights of cars on a motorway

Sometimes we enjoy really fast Internet access, and yet at other times it’s frustratingly slow! So the question is why, and what does this have to do with posting a letter, or cars on a motorway? And how did electronic engineers turn the problem into a business opportunity?….. (read on)

Hedy Lamarr: The movie star, the piano player and the torpedo (and frequency hopping)

A portrait of Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr was a 1940’s movie star, considered one of the screen’s most beautiful women. But Hedy was more than just good looks and acting skills. Even though many people remembered Hedy for her pithy quote “Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid”, at the outbreak of World War 2 she and composer George Antheil invented an encryption technique for a torpedo radio guidance system! The idea is now used in our mobile networks. (read on)

Even the dolphins use pocket switched networks

A dolphin surfing a wave

Why might slow rather than fast networks be important? In space! Under the sea! In a disaster area. In the Arctic! Find out about a different way we could build our networks …(read on)

Alexander Graham Bell: Its good to talk

An old fashioned phone

Suppose you want to send messages as fast as possible. What’s the best way to do it? By light in optical networks, but even then with innovation you can speed things up…(Read on)

Gutta-percha: how a tree started a global telecom revolution

Latex dripping from a tapped teree

Obscure plants and animals can turn out to be surprisingly useful. The tree Gutta-percha kick-started the worldwide telecoms boom of the 19th century that ultimately led to the creation of global networks including the Internet…(read on)

Scilly cable antics

Sunset over the Scilly Isles with a sailing boat in the foreground

Autumn 1869. There were great celebrations as the 31 mile long telecommunications cable was finally hauled up the shore and into the hut. The Scilly Isles now had a direct cable communication link to the mainland…(read on)

Telecom puzzles

A spot the difference puzzle between two phones

Here are some computational thinking linked puzzles (wordsearch, kriss kross, spot the difference, etc) with a telecom theme …(Read on)

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This blog is funded by EPSRC on grant EP/W033615/1.