Holy &^%! Los Alamos Reveals quantum network.
And even if you did not forget that you're living in the future, the network has been up and running for two and a half years!
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-los-alamos-reveals-quantum-network.html
(Phys.org) —In a recent paper available on arXiv, a team of researchers at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory has revealed they've been running a quantum network for 2 1/2 years. The network is hub-and-spoke based, the team reports, and allows for perfectly secure messaging except at the hub.
Quantum networks are the Holy Grail for security experts—because messages cannot be read without changing them, it is impossible for them to be intercepted without being detected. But that same technology that allows for such perfect security also prevents it from being implemented in network systems. In order for messages to be routed, the address must be read, thus altering the message. The researchers at Los Alamos report they've worked around this problem by implementing the network as a hub-and-spoke system.
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http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514581/government-lab-reveals-quantum-internet-operated-continuously-for-over-two-years/
The big advantage of this system is that it makes the technology required at each node extremely simple–essentially little more than a laser. In fact, Los Alamos has already designed and built plug-and-play type modules that are about the size of a box of matches. “Our next-generation [module] will be an order of magnitude smaller in each linear dimension,” they say.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.0305
Network-centric quantum communications (NQC) - a new, scalable instantiation of quantum cryptography providing key management with forward security for lightweight encryption, authentication and digital signatures in optical networks - is briefly described. Results from a multi-node experimental test-bed utilizing integrated photonics quantum communications components, known as QKarDs, include: quantum identification; verifiable quantum secret sharing; multi-party authenticated key establishment, including group keying; and single-fiber quantum-secured communications that can be applied as a security retrofit/upgrade to existing optical fiber installations. A demonstration that NQC meets the challenging simultaneous latency and security requirements of electric grid control communications, which cannot be met without compromises using conventional cryptography, is described.
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Wow.... I don't claim to know much about this, but it looks really, really important as a working application.
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