A quantum Internet for communicating information encoded in quantum systems over large distances would enable a host of new technologies to be deployed. While exciting progress has been made in small-scale quantum networks, a global quantum Internet will require - like the classical Internet - communicating in a multiple quantum Internet service provider (multi-qISP) setting, with protocols that are oblivious to the global network topology. Here we give a brief overview of quantum networks aimed at those new to the field, present two network-oblivious transport layer protocols for enabling high fidelity communication and performing fault diagnostics, and highlight a number of research opportunities in this nascent field of research.
A quantum Internet for communicating information encoded in quantum systems over large distances would enable a host of new technologies to be deployed. While exciting progress has been made in small-scale quantum networks, a global quantum Internet will require - like the classical Internet - communicating in a multiple quantum Internet service provider (multi-qISP) setting, with protocols that are oblivious to the global network topology. Here we give a brief overview of quantum networks aimed at those new to the field, present two network-oblivious transport layer protocols for enabling high fidelity communication and performing fault diagnostics, and highlight a number of research opportunities in this nascent field of research.
In the coming years, quantum networks will allow quantum applications to thrive thanks to the new opportunities offered by end-to-end entanglement of qubits on remote hosts via quantum repeaters. On a geographical scale, this will lead to the dawn of the quantum internet. While a fullblown deployment is yet to come, the research community is already working on a variety of individual enabling technologies and solutions. In this article, with the guidance of extensive simulations, we take a broader view and investigate the problems of quality of service (QoS) and provisioning in the context of quantum networks, which are very different from their counterparts in classical data networks due to some of their fundamental properties. Our work leads the way toward a new class of studies that will allow the research community to better understand the challenges of quantum networks and their potential commercial exploitation.
Breakthrough developments in quantum information technology is paving the way to the Quantum Internet. This article aims to provide an overview of the current state of research and development in the field of Quantum Communications and Quantum Internet. We examine the main building blocks and the latest achievements. By providing a holistic overview of recent achievements, this article fosters a deeper understanding of these building blocks, the related opportunities, and challenges associated with the realization of the Quantum Internet. We also provide some simple pedagogical models aimed to give the reader a clear insight on the interactions between quantum networking elements. A simple Quantum Internet 5Level-3D communication model is also provided, which integrates with, rather than parallels, the classical OSI and TCP/IP models. We further describe deployed testbeds and trials and highlight potential opportunities and challenges for Communication Service Provider's. We also provide some KPIs of quantum technologies and their evolution over the last decade. This article is intended as a self-contained entry level tutorial for newcomers who are not familiar with quantum information theory, but with some background knowledge about classical networking. Academics, students, as well as professionals can use this article to become able to begin researching the Quantum Internet, without having to read a plethora of articles, web pages, and books on the subject.
The Quantum Internet represents a paradigm shift in communication technology, leveraging quantum mechanical principles such as superposition, entanglement, and the no-cloning theorem to enable ultra-secure, high-fidelity, and potentially revolutionary global connectivity. Unlike the classical internet, which transmits bits through electromagnetic signals, the Quantum Internet transmits qubits, allowing the creation of unbreakable cryptographic channels, distributed quantum computation, and quantum-enhanced sensing networks. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the Quantum Internet, covering its underlying principles, layered architecture, enabling hardware technologies, and core communication protocols. We analyze current and emerging applications, from secure government and financial communications to healthcare and fundamental physics experiments. The study highlights the unique advantages of quantum networking, such as intrinsic security against eavesdropping, global-scale entanglement distribution, and integration with distributed computing infrastructures. At the same time, it addresses practical limitations, including distance constraints, quantum memory coherence times, infrastructure costs, and security risks associated with hardware vulnerabilities. Special attention is given to the feasibility of large-scale deployment in India, leveraging national programs such as NM-QTA and QuEST, as well as satellite-based quantum communication initiatives by ISRO. The paper concludes with a roadmap for the realization of a global quantum network, identifying technical, infrastructural, and policy challenges that must be addressed in the coming decades.
Quantum networks play a pivotal role in quantum information science, which not only provide a secure communication platform for remote access to quantum computers but also serve as the strategic core for achieving large-scale quantum information processing, forming the foundational infrastructure for the future global-scale quantum internet. Quantum teleportation, which enables the transmission of unknown quantum states over long distances by employing quantum entanglement together with classical communication, is essential for the distribution of quantum resources in the construction of the global-scale quantum internet. To realize a global-scale quantum internet, quantum repeater protocols represent one of the most promising approaches for enabling quantum communication between any nodes. This concise review presents representative experimental demonstrations of quantum teleportation for constructing quantum networks across different physical platforms. Along this trajectory, the review discusses current challenges, open issues, and future perspectives toward scalable and practical quantum internet.
The advanced notebooks, mobile phones, and internet applications in today’s world that we use are all entrenched in classical communication bits of zeros and ones. Classical internet has laid its foundation originating from the amalgamation of mathematics and Claude Shannon’s theory of information. However, today’s internet technology is a playground for eavesdroppers. This poses a serious challenge to various applications that rely on classical internet technology, and it has motivated the researchers to switch to new technologies that are fundamentally more secure. By exploring the quantum effects, researchers paved the way into quantum networks that provide security, privacy, and range of capabilities such as quantum computation, communication, and metrology. The realization of Quantum Internet (QI) requires quantum communication between various remote nodes through quantum channels guarded by quantum cryptographic protocols. Such networks rely upon quantum bits (qubits) that can simultaneously take the value of zeros and ones. Due to the extraordinary properties of qubits such as superposition, entanglement, and teleportation, it gives an edge to quantum networks over traditional networks in many ways. At the same time, transmitting qubits over long distances is a formidable task and extensive research is going on satellite-based quantum communication, which will deliver breakthroughs for physically realizing QI in near future. In this paper, QI functionalities, technologies, applications and open challenges have been extensively surveyed to help readers gain a basic understanding of the infrastructure required for the development of the global QI.
The recent development of small-scale quantum networks poses the question of which network-level mechanisms could enable quantum communication to operate at scale in a future Quantum Internet. The question can be answered within a well-established framework where a quantum network is mapped into a classical weighted graph, and communication reliability is assessed using methods from network theory. Previous work relied on this framework to determine sufficient conditions for viable network-wide communication only on special network topologies, such as regular lattices, and to devise communication protocols applicable only to small- and moderate-sized real networks. Here, we overcome both limitations by introducing a family of quantum communication protocols that scale to networks with hundreds of millions of nodes. We show that the competition between increasing communication distance and path redundancy determines their large-scale behavior, and that degree heterogeneity can provide sufficient redundancy to sustain communication in small-world networks. These conclusions are supported by a systematic analysis of both real network topologies and synthetic networks, and an analytical treatment in the limit of infinitely large random scale-free graphs.