  Long-distance quantum communication via distant pairs of entangled quantum
bits (qubits) is the first step towards more secure message transmission and
distributed quantum computing. To date, the most promising proposals require
quantum repeaters to mitigate the exponential decrease in communication rate
due to optical fiber losses. However, these are exquisitely sensitive to the
lifetimes of their memory elements. We propose a multiplexing of quantum nodes
that should enable the construction of quantum networks that are largely
insensitive to the coherence times of the quantum memory elements.
