Last Friday the Dutch organization QuTech unveiled actually the first browser for quantum Internet. The “quantum network browser” QNE (Quantum Network Explorer) was solemnly launched. QNE is actually a software stack for developing quantum applications with widely available software tools and even without the need for knowledge of quantum physics.
The Dutch research organization QuTech is a national quantum research center under the patronage of the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) as well as the Quantum Delta NL. QuTech activities also take place within the framework of the work curated by the pan-European Quantum Internet Alliance. Creating software tools for the transparent and easier construction of quantum applications is one of the foundations of the future of the quantum Internet, which will come sooner or later.
Quantum Network Explorer currently runs on a simulation of quantum computers. In the future, the simulation will be replaced by real quantum hardware. It is important to recall that in the spring of this year, QuTech has created a prototype of a three-node Internet network with support for a quantum data exchange protocol through a quantum router. In other words, quantum “iron” can already be tested at the level of exchange protocols, putting experiments not on a simulator, but on real equipment with quantum properties.