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Replacing Fiber With 10 Gigabit/Second Wireless
Chicken_dinner writes "Engineers at Battelle have come up with a way to send data through the air at 10 Gigabits per second using point-to-point millimeter-wave technology. They used standard optical networking equipment and essentially combined two lower bandwidth signals to produce a 10Gb signal from the interference. They say the technology could replace fiber optics around large campuses or companies or even deliver high-bandwidth streaming within the home."
so KFC then when a bird flies through the beam
There are a lot of wireless technologies in use today that simply aren't reliable enough to be permanent replacements for their wired counterparts.
My wireless home network gets frazzled when the microwave runs and cant go 30ft through walls without significant signal loss. Wireless keyboards and mice and bluetooth can never transmit as far as spec, and god forbid someone else use the same model in a 90 foot radius.
I can't get my computer 20 feet away to pick up a wireless keyboard signal, but a wireless keyboard signal 50 ft away screws with mine?
Cell phones which are older and probably have had more money than wireless networking thrown at them still use coverage and dropped calls as major advertising points.
For now, my wired ethernet is faster and never has a problem, my wired keyboard and mouse always work (and dont need batteries), and a land line never drops a call. I am sure this wireless technology is great and useful, but using it as a replacement for fiber is probably a mistake.
This sounds good, but it's definitely going to be a limited usage technology. Putting in backhauls to a remote telco might be a real option. The biggest concerns are:
1. this seems to be line of sight only, so no broadcasting HDTV from a closet to the TV
2. point to point means backhaul only, distribution would still be by copper/fiber/wifi
3. mm waves are subject to attenuation by atmospherics, so "rain fade" might be a stumbling block
4. line of sight limits maximum distance between receiver/transmitters due to earth curvature
All in all it's a great leap to get higher bit density over wireless, but this is clearly a commercial-level component...us peons won't get to use it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Its about time.... 10 MegaBits would do.
There are a lot of homes that the Broadband
suppliers will not touch, the 12 people on
my street are only a few 10/th of a mile from
a main back bone... But There is noting but
dial up here...
So who is going to supply cheap hardware and
backbone connections.. that should put the big
Broadband suppliers out of business.
No, that's WiFi at 2.4GHz, shared with microwave ovens. This system operates at fifty times that frequency.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why replace fiber?
Besides reducing the glycemic effect of meals and contributing to colon health, there is evidence that fiber may benefit us in other ways. It seems to help lower cholesterol and triglycerides, and also may help to prevent ulcers, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Can wireless really do all of that?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Could you create a protocol that always operated at maximum bandwidth and which filled that extra bandwidth with bogus or random data to make intercepting and extracting useful information cost prohibative (money, resources, computation limits, etc)?
... to provide line-of-sight for big high-speed meshes with fixed terrestrial components of the network at elevated ground locations? 10GB is a nice backbone to 1GB wired distribution points if the volume of traffic could be managed.
A worthy contender to the clack trunk!
Are the lasers that they are using in the microwave range? Shouldn't they be called Masers (I believe that's the correct term)? Then why the reference to "optical" networking gear? Really just curious.
By the way (if anyone bothers reading this) I heard that the use of microwaves as a cooking method was discovered when technicians who climbed microwave towers reported hearing "popping" sounds while they worked. No microphones could pick it up and it was eventually determined that the rapid expansion and contraction of the water in their skulls due to the microwaves was being "heard" by their eardrums. Anybody know if this is fact or fiction?
Yup. Solar panels capable of keeping a lightweight aircraft in the air permanently and monomolecular balloons (effectively no leakage) were just two of the recent breakthroughs covered here on Slashdot. Still no news on the technology behind Cory Doctorow's balloon, though.
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No more slowness with my crappy Linksys WAP!!!
This would be one hell of a birthday gift (hint hint)
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
They don't call it the radar range for nothing. I believe that it was a guy working on radar systems that found you could cook with them. I think this was long before microwave communication was in use.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
>using point-to-point millimeter-wave technology.
"Radio" ?
>and essentially combined two lower bandwidth signals to produce a 10Gb signal from the interference.
"Mixer" ?
Stop the presses!!! Well OK so they did it with lasers, neat-o, but I'm having trouble getting excited. And I don't really get why these days people would *rather* be bombarded with insane amounts of RF than string a few wires and be done with it. Well as long as they don't aim it at me or expect me to pay for it, good for them I guess, but the article doesn't really capture the new-ness.
Nice freudian slip... but totally true. Adding the word Enterprise to your product, you can charge like 1000% more. That's the Enterprice.
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Speaking as someone who runs an IP based largely on LOS wireless repeaters to get to nearby head ends. Our 45mbit wireless connections are far less reliable and speedy as a fiber link. problem with fiber is you gotta run it. and that isnt an option here.
Most of these posts seems to be missing the most useful of this technology, replacing cable lines at the last mile part of broadband instead of fiber (assuming this become cheap enough and can transfer long enough distances without interferance). unlike fiber, you don't need to dig up the roads to install it which can be quite expensive, not to mention the required city approval. also, upgrading the last mile will probably cheaper as well you would only need to upgrade the transmitting devices as technology advances. This seems to be more of a cable replacement then a wireless replacement which is of more consumer usage for moble devices. hopefully, it won't use the 2.4ghz frequency and intefere with wifi so it can coexist (use this technology to connect the wan part of the router and wifi to connect to the laptop)
The company Gigabeam (gigabeam.com) has been at this for years.
Although they have some major installs (ring around NYC and other), they don't make any money.
They also used to be traded on Nasdaq, but now they are on pink sheets (did I mention they don't make any money?)
I have lost money in the stock market here and there; I hate to admit.
"Line of sight" = "Won't work in rain, snow, ice, dust, or fog" for the high frequencies this is using. Granted, it's a lot faster and cheaper to install than fiber, but less reliable.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Am I the only one who saw the "cancer" tag and mentally expanded it to "the cancer that is killing /." ?
Woohoo! Free space optics speed has been increased to 10Gbps. Kinda like what we were doing with Dense Wave Division Multiplexing(DWDM).
Works great under ideal conditions. Rain and mast sway interference are still an issue. Signal is "observable" and therefore subject to eves dropping requiring encryption that halves the bandwidth and increases latency.
What was old is new again. Yawn.
backbone, try Meta-muse-ul to restore regularity between bottlenecks and freely-flowing packets...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Terabeam made a big wave developing this back around 2000; blew through a lot of venture capital, and ended up with a okay product. I'm sure it's great for a lot of applications, but definitely a niche market. I believe it was 1Gb, but that was a lo-ong time ago. I think they're still going as an arm of Proxim.
There's still something much more comforting about a physical media connection from point A to point B. My primary concern with replacing fiber with wireless would be security, or lack of viable security for securing my wireless.
So at what point does all this wireless bandwidth start to give me migranes or weaken my muscles? I'm not the tinfoil hat type, but I do work for a nuclear company and understand what different types of radiation exposures do.
Sit in the den with Daddy and let us all bask in radar's warm glowing warming glow.
Sig this!
Wireless keyboards and mice and bluetooth can never transmit as far as spec, and god forbid someone else use the same model in a 90 foot radius.
The way it is designed, bluetooth supposedly fixes the interference with other models problem.
It has a lot of channels to hop between (and starting from version 1.2 of the standard is even able to reduce interferences to/from Wifi), and once two device are paired they know exactly to which each has to talk : you could have dozens in the same room each will correctly talk to the exact one to which it is paired.
In my current work, there are at least a dozen of bluetooth enabled device around (including PDAs, Mices, Phones, Laptops, PC with usb dongles, etc.)
We never run into conflicts (except when trying to pair a new device. Then you have suddenly a dozen of entries to pick from on the detection list).
If your bluetooth device have problems determining which other device they must talk to, please check if you have paired everything carefully, complete with PIN exchange.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If I remember my Physics correctly, (wavelength)x(frequency) = c (speed of light), for electromagnetic radiation, assuming a vacuum. So, for this field test, they used effectively 100 Gigahertz. The wavelength, therefore, was approximately 3mm, assuming the radiation wasn't slowed artificially. This still falls within the range which is referred to as "millimeter wave", but be aware that it's not exactly one millimeter. The band ranges from 1 millimeter (300 Ghz) to 10 millimeters (30 Ghz).
10 Gigabits is not very high and you most likely can only get maybe 10 channels of that.
Using propper fiberobtic wires you can easily do those kinds of bandwidth today, but have the option of using hundreds of wavelengths to simply multiply your capacity on a single fiber. Plus as nobody actually digs in single fibers, you nearly always have more than one pair of fibers.
So this will not replace fiber, but maybe certain types of current microwave links. There are uses for it, but definitely not for bringing internet to the masses. For this MIMO-based meshed networks might be an alternative where fibers aren't availiable.
*sigh*
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Yes, unless you're making any long-distance calls. Boy are they unreliable! What with being relayed between hundreds of microwave towers... Hence "MCI" WorldCom (formerly: Microwave Communications, Inc.).
My satellite dish keeps dropping my TV signal. Clearly, satellite communications are a failed technology that will never catch on. That must explain why nobody, anywhere, wants to put up any satellites. It's wires across the globe for me!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Replacing Fiber With 10 Gigabit/Second Wireless but does it keep you regular ?? Sorry - I'm a pharmacist. When I see the word fiber, I don't think of cable/wireless