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Using IR Lasers Instead of Fiber

Posted by michael on from the can't-resist-a-laser-story dept.

Artifice_Eternity writes: "Can't deal with the trouble, time or expense of digging up the street to get fiberoptic cable to your building in the big city? There's another way...infrared line-of-sight infrared lasers between your building and another one nearby. Repeaters and redundancy can keep the chain going reliably for miles, with gigabit data transmission rates."

8 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Weather by CAIMLAS · · Score: 4, Funny

    What about cloudy days, storms, or even ice on the windows (provided the instrument is housed)? Would these things effect bandwidth? BOFH answer #556454: You can't get your files off the server right now because the cloud cover is too thick.

    --
    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    1. Re:Weather by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 3, Funny

      You can be pretty sure this system wouldn't work in L.A.

      "Allign it with that building over there."
      "What? What building, where?"

  2. infrared? by khuber · · Score: 5, Funny

    "infrared line-of-sight infrared lasers" All products are approved by our Department of Redundancy Department. -Kevin

  3. Plywood Fade :-) by billstewart · · Score: 5, Funny

    A number of years ago, a friend of mine was at University of Colorado. They had two computer centers which were connected by an infrared laser which was pointed out the window of one building to the other building. It had minor data loss during snowstorms, but was pretty reliable. One day the window broke, and a repair person came by and put a piece of plywood over the window until they could get a piece of glass big enough to repair it properly. He didn't understand why all the computer people started yelling at him.... after all, *he* couldn't see the invisible light beam going through the broken window :-)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  4. Dr. Evil by AragornSonOfArathorn · · Score: 2, Funny

    "I want sharks with frickin' infrared laserbeams attached to their frickin' heads!"

    --
    sudo eat my shorts
  5. A side benefit... by leviramsey · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...would be hacking the kernel to transmit remote control waves. Imagine the possibilities:

    • cron scripts to change the TV to certain channels every day at a specified time.
    • if you hate the guy in the building across the street, just aim the transceiver at his TV and watch for when his s.o. comes through the door and change the channel to hardcore pr0n channel.

    And if that doesn't work, you could always use it as a spare heat lamp (very desirable when running an overclocked system...)

  6. True story by OiBoy · · Score: 2, Funny

    We had this at the office where I used to work. It seemed to go down on a regular basis, for a different reason every time. However, my favorite has to be the time it went down because a homeless person put a sticky note on the lens!

    --
    `fortune -o`
  7. Ibm Commerical by korruptDOTcom · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Why?!? the files where are the files?"
    "The networks down."
    "OH MY GOD!"
    "WHY!"
    "BIRDS, BIRDS EVERYWHERE BLOCKING IR?"
    "WHATS IR?"
    You are SO ready for IBM infastructure.