Government-Funded Quantum Internet Revealed

Los Alamos National Labs has been running a quantum Internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages for over two years now, according to MIT Technology Review.

Quantum communication is a dream come true for security experts, given that the very act of measuring a quantum object changes it, thus rendering eavesdropping on a "one-time pad" passed through the network essentially impossible.

Other attempts at quantum communication include equipping the International Space Station with a single-photon counting module in order to carry out experiments to confirm that, among other things, entangled photons are in fact under governance of quantum physics rather than classical physics.

Even more recently, scientists at the University of New South Wales in Australia announced that a quantum computer may be just around the corner thanks to their discovery that a reliable reading can be drawn based on the rotations of a nucleus of a single atom positioned in a silicon chip, whereas previous attempts focused on trapping an atom in an electromagnetic vacuum chamber.

A major limitation to quantum cryptography systems, however, is its reliance on point-to-point connection, which allows the passing of a “message” from point A to B but nowhere beyond that as to reroute a message is to inherently change it..

However, Richard Hughes and colleagues at Los Alamos revealed Monday an alternative quantum Internet based on a hub and spoke-like network that reroutes all messages from any point in the network to another via the central hub.

"Anyone who uses a credit card, computer or smartphone relies on cryptography," Hughes said in a press release. "The story of cryptography is a centuries-long struggle between code makers and code breakers, but the new technology of quantum cryptography is poised to tip the scales in favor of the code makers by harnessing the quantum properties of light."

Such an approach includes the conversion of the messages into conventional classical bits that are then reconverted back into quantum bits for the second leg of the journey.

The problem, however, is scalability, though Hughes says he and his team have solved this through equipping each node in the network with quantum transmitters, so while only the hub is capable of receiving quantum messages, the nodes are able to send and receive conventional messages.

The network remains secure as each node sends a one-time pad to the hub it uses to communicate safely over a classical link. The hub is then able to route this message to another node using another one-time pad created with the second node.

Going forward, the group hopes to one day see these modules built into any device connected to a fiber optic network, whether it be TVs or home computers, thus allowing them to communicate securely.