Quantum networking and internetworking

Quantum networks build on entanglement and quantum measurement to bring new capabilities to communication systems. Quantum physical effects can be used to detect eavesdropping, to improve the shared sensitivity of separated astronomical instruments, or to create distributed states that will enable numerical quantum computation over a distance using teleportation. Because quantum data is fragile and some quantum operations are probabilistic, errors and distributed calculations must be managed aggressively and perhaps cooperatively among nodes. Solutions to these problems will have both similarities to and differences from purely classical networks. Architectures for large-scale quantum networking and internetworking are in development, paralleling theoretical and experimental work on physical layers and low-level error management and connection technologies. With unentangled quantum networks already deployed, entangled networks may appear within the next few years and will form a vibrant research topic in the coming decade.