Ubiquitous Multi-Gigabit Wireless Within Three Years

Anonymous Howard passed us a link to the Press Escape blog, and a post about the future of ultra-fast wireless connectivity. Georgia Tech researchers unveiled plans to use ultra-high frequency radio transmissions to achieve very high data transmission rates over short distances. In a few years, the article says, we'll have ubiquitous multi-gigabit wireless connectivity, with some significant advances already under their belts. "GEDC team have already achieved wireless data-transfer rates of 15 gigabits per second (Gbps) at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters and 5 Gbps at 5 meters. 'The goal here is to maximize data throughput to make possible a host of new wireless applications for home and office connectivity,' said Prof. Joy Laskar, GEDC director and lead researcher on the project along with Stephane Pinel. Pinel is confident that Very high speed, p2p data connections could be available potentially in less than two years. The research could lead to devices such as external hard drives, laptop computers, MP-3 players, cell phones, commercial kiosks and others could transfer huge amounts of data in seconds while data centers could install racks of servers without the customary jumble of wires."

Comments

I am a data center manager

[Travoltus]

Maybe some lower security data centers might enable wireless, but I doubt it. Being that we're a financial institution (a small one, mind you), there's no way in the h to the e to the double hockey sticks that I'd ever enable any kind of wireless anything in our data center.

I'd rather deal with a network cable gone sentient and whipping around like a snake and attacking people, than go wireless at the data center.

Only an idiot thinks there's a wireless transmission that's invulnerable to being intercepted. Heck, wired communications aren't 100% secure, either, but my boss's business is about minimizing risk, and wireless networks even inside a data center is not minimizing risk.

Re:I am a data center manager

[walt-sjc]

My little cage at the colo doesn't have 5 servers. It has hundreds. I'm also sharing that datacenter with many many other companies that have cages with hundreds of servers. We deal with SAN / iSCSI, NAS, backups over networks, etc. With the noise and limited bandwidth available in a shared frequency space, I seriously doubt any type of wireless will be very useful in a datacenter - especially since everything is already connected via hard-wired connections.

It also won't be very useful in my home, where wires are already easy to run for the short-distance devices, and noise / distance prohibits the use in cases where I could really use and WANT high-speed wireless.

So it does sound like a neat trick, but what is a valid, viable use case for it?

I could REALLY use something much different. I want to get rid of the 20 or so wall-wart power supplies under my desk. I want one larger power supply that I can run small cables to all the devices. Why can't devices negotiate for how much voltage / current they need?

Not for the data center

[nincehelser]

I can't see any real application for this in a data center. They'll always use wires, switches, and routers. One simple reason is that one bad wireless transmitter could jam a whole bunch of nearby servers, which probably wouldn't be good. Wires have their uses. Sometimes it's good to keep your data flow contained and controlled.

Re:Call me a luddite, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Cause the biosphere wasn't already inundated with electromagnetic radiation. Its a good thing the rest of the universe doesn't spew loads of it towards the Earth. Oh wait...

...for that matter...

[drakaan]

while data centers could install racks of servers without the customary jumble of wires

Somehow I don't see "whole data centers" using a data transmission method where any device can potentially intercept the data going to and coming from any other device. Might make your hosting clients a bit nervous.

Re:FTFA

[Moby Cock]

Useless? No. But very application specific. However, there is a great appeal in making Personal Area Networks.

That and being able to connect a DVD player to a TV without a cable would be, in a purely geek way, quite elegant.

Interesting technology

[retro128]

This technology could be used in applications besides just strict data transfer. 15Gbs should be fast enough to drive a display, as well. The proverbial rats' nest behind your computer could completely disappear with this technology. Keyboards, mice, displays, network - Just about cable plugged into the back of your computer could be replaced with wireless this fast.

But if only it were so simple. Of course now the problem we have is with security. Never mind TEMPEST. If you had a big enough antenna and you could decrypt (it IS encrypted...heavily...right?) the datastream emanating from this technology from a distance - you could see the display, keystrokes, data transfers, everything. Obviously, strong encryption is very important - But the overhead from strong encryption will reduce the theoretical bandwidth because of the extra baggage on the packets, and increase costs significantly because of the very specialized ASICs that will likely be required to encrypt a stream at that speed. And they'd have to be standard across all devices. AND an exploit had better not be discovered in the algorithm. Then there's the issue of the 60GHz band. A frequency that high is very unforgiving of obstructions, even at the short ranges we're talking about. If you have a metal desk, forget it. And what about jamming from computers in close proximity? What about from a "l33t hax0r" with some time on his hands and an inclination to make trouble?