A computer industry wish-list

The first step along the road from today´s electronic active hubs towards a fully passive network could be something along the lines of what is described, an active hub with optical dataflow and electronic control. The author has a vision in which the size of the box is dictated not by the power supplies and fans, but by the optical connectors. An 8-port active hub, dissipating 10 Watts in a volume of 2 litres, could perhaps be hidden among the cables under the floorboards! To achieve this by optical switching, four components are needed, a switch, an amplifier, a phase matching device and a decoder. The requirements for each are given and then a simple network using the components is described