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Scientists Test World's Fastest Wireless Network
MojoKid writes "Scientists in Pisa, Italy claim to have set
a new world record for the fastest wireless data transmission. They report
that they were able to achieve throughput speeds above 1.2 Terabits per second, which they say beats the previous wireless data transmission speed record of 160 Gigabits per second, achieved by Korean scientists. The technology that the Pisa scientists utilized actually shares a significant similarity with fiber optics. Unlike Wi-Fi or microwave communications, which use radio-based transmissions, the Pisa scientists used a technology called free-space optical communications. In free space optics, an energy beam is collimated and transmitted through space rather than being guided through an optical cable."
While technically achieved without wires, the thing with WiFi is that you can used the omnidirectional nature of the transmission (along with refraction and diffraction of the signal) to access the signal anywhere within its range, often without line of sight. Naturally, free space optics requires an uninterrupted line of sight and significant alignment procedures. Now I'm not saying line of sight networking is useless (it was used to great effect after 9/11 and is great for places you need a temp. network but can't string a wire) but comparing it to radio WiFi is a bit apples/oranges.
I always knew those scientists in Pisa leaned toward having faster networks. They've always towered over the rest of the world, technologically.
using an entirely different technology that has significant limitations with line of sight, some dudes did something that has a totally different application range as what some other dudes did before, and did it faster!
seriously, apples != oranges and wireless w/ RF != wireless w/ line of sight
For backbones and TV channels, it might be interesting to deploy this once or twice. But what's next? Where is this going to be used? Why do we need the bandwidth? I'm personally content with my 2000 kbit down/600 kbit up.
there should be a difference between point-2-point speed record, and point-2-multipoint, which concerns most of us wifi-users. P2P connections are used mainly in business, and they can have backup links should, let's say' fog happen that will disperse all the transmission (reduced wisibility).
Plain old sigh.
Free space optics has been around for a while, and cost has been more of a stumbling block than speed. I'd much rather have a 10 mb/s rig for $500, rather than the 1000 mb/s rigs companies are selling today for $50,000.
I've been interested in the Ronja project for a while, but it's very labor intensive to build and deploy. Somebody ought to commercialize it.
...the only way you'll get it is to move up in the electromagnetic spectrum. It had to be a laser based communications system.
The alternative is to smear this crap all over the electromagnetic spectrum. And at this data rate, if you really expect throughput, you can't rely on spread spectrum to save you.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
I was about to say the same thing about wireless being omnidirectional and "free space" optics being single point source and directional.
It occurs to me however that this is not new technology. Back in Chicago in the mid 90s, I did some interesting work at a very well funded mom-and-pop ISP that was playing with some "line of sight" (RF and optical) T-1 equivalents. The "free space optic" portion of the circuit died completely every time it rained, so it wasn't too terribly useful for anything outdoors, like shooting a high speed line across town by aiming a couple of transceivers out some open windows.
it's directional, needs no objects between the 2 points of communication, communication affected by fog/atmospheric turbulence
I knew it was only a matter of time before they found a way to accelerate radio waves past 299,792,458 meters per second.
"Unlike Wi-Fi or microwave communications, which use radio-based transmissions, the Pisa scientists used a technology called free-space optical communications. In free space optics, an energy beam is collimated and transmitted through space rather than being guided through an optical cable.""
So basically Shannon was right.
Another way to look at that is 6/10ths of a Comcast Monthly Cap per second.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
It is 3.4 porn collections per second.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It would be interesting if this technology could be used in a computer to make super fast buses.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The morontators have answeredf ,y cyeostyion, they are gayes bec;luyhs hftujl0-= po they "offto poiujd" my poset.
They were able to achieve throughput speeds above 1.2 Terabits per second, which they say beats the previous wireless data transmission speed record of 160 Gigabits per second by Korean scientists.
They did the maths so you don't have to!
They are all around us... laptops, PDA's, etc. Even your TV remote! Much lower bitrates, obviously. Essentially, these guys used a laser beam instead of a simple LED.
Kicking it up to just above a Terabit per second is an impressive feat of technology. Unfortrunately, the range and throughput of such a system would be limited by various environmental factors- dust, smoke, and water vapor. Not to mention the power of the sun, outdoors. You also have numerous other sources of light pollution getting in the way. Using it within existing tunnels might be one way of avoiding stringing fiber through them... but it wouldn't take much to disrupt the beam. A spider's web in just the wrong place, for example, where the spider or one of its victims blocks the beam.
Still, it's pretty cool to get the data that fast through the air.
Willie...
It's not proper to call it wireless when there would be no wires in any case. It's glassless. And, as they imply, amplitude modulation of light is rather different than phase modulation of coherent RF.
they were able to achieve throughput speeds above 1.2 Terabits per second
Unfortunately, what they didn't tell you was that all those bits were zeroes.
There are limits to this method, but it does have some possible implementations. Maybe we'll use directional optical links to and from satellites that need huge amounts of data transferred (Hubble/spy/moon colony).
Also, this is a cool breakthrough for the sake of science and progress in general. Though I normally join in cynicism, I can actually see some benefits in this experiment.
Ronja is pretty much on topic. http://ronja.twibright.com/
From their FAQ:
Material for one Ronja 10M Metropolis device costs 2000CZK and building the device takes 70 hours.
2000CZK; about $120. 70 hours though is even at minimum wage ($6.55) $500 or so. You need two of them, so really a minimum of $1,240 in costs. Then add markup, even here the devices are going to cost $2,500 just for the hardware to set up a link, add consultancy, site surveys and you're into the same ballpark as the existing commercial FSO providers.
What is off topic though, the fact that same bunch of people seem to have largely solved the problem of archiving data for 500 years. Possibly longer if vellum were used.
http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/
another tool along the same lines
http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html
Course, the first 100 pages of any archive would have to be the ascii source code of the application to read the data encoded on the last page.
Deleted
Whatever bandwidth you can get into an optical fiber is easy to transmit wirelessly point-to-point. A collimating lens on the end of the TX and RX fiber and you are done.
To fill up the link with data, you need a 40Gb/s DWDM laser. You can easily add 128 different colors of these, and your link is up to 5 Tb/s.
I needed a source of light like this to test a receiver/spectrum analyzer, and put one of these together (with the 10 lasers I could find muxed together), and did not bother to mention it.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Although this, "la ser" is really fast, I dont think the "la ser" is any good if not in line of sight. This technology might be something thats good for a neighborhood internet technology.
Its still really cool to see that Italy is doing something with its self. Like I said,
"when in Rome, Do what a 'las er' would do."
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
Personally, I'm more interested in how they got data read from the storage medium at 1.2 terabits/s - unless it was random data?
Never underestimate the bandwith of a wagon load of tapes dropped from the tower...
Forgive me. (cowers)
They report that they were able to achieve throughput speeds above 1.2 Terabits per second, which they say beats the previous wireless data transmission speed record of 160 Gigabits per second by Korean scientists.
And who could doubt them. I mean, who in their right mind could tell these scientists that 1.2 Terabits/second is not faster than 160 Gigabits/second?
Sorry to be pedantic, but can't we try to be a little precise, sometimes?
Wow, that's amazing. They can deliver the internet faster and in such a capacity that I would be going over my monthly limit in uh.. 1/6 of a second! :)
What you need is to increase the power of the laser every time the signal drops. Say a goose flies into the line, you just need to increase the power of the laser (a lot) and you could burn right through the goose without losing any packets. With a powerful enough laser, nothing could stop the downloading of 1.2 TB of information at any given second of the day.
This story is intriguing but, as many have pointed out, has its obvious limitations. I thought slashdot had an article once about using plastics instead of glass for fibre optics. Why not invest more time and energy in this way? That would take the cost of fibre networking down significantly. I think, since a large cost savings could be realized, telcos would have a better chance of upgrading aging infrastructure and we might have broadband speeds that are more favorably compared in Japan.
are you at a beach or somthing?
It's amazing 1.2 Terabits per second. How did they deliver the data to the laser quick enough, even if they were just a bunch of zero's. Beats the pant off my Commodore 64 web-server. c64web.com
More important:
10Mbit Wireless that doesn't require line of sight.
10Mbit Wireless that has much more range. (eg, miles, not feet)
Both of the above, 'consumer' friendly and Ethernet-compatible.
Then work on a 54Mbit version.
LOL! That's a good one. :)
Willie...
despite the million dollars it takes to set up a connection like that, I want it.