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Wireless Internet Access Uses Visible Light, Not Radio Waves
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a company has demonstrated a new form of wireless communication that uses light instead of radio waves. "Its inventor, St. Cloud resident John Pederson, says visible-light embedded wireless data communication is the next step in the evolution of wireless communications, one that will expand the possibilities in phone and computer use. The connection provides Web access with almost no wiring, better security and with speeds more than eight times faster than cable."
It's called free space optics. The technology has been around a long time, in fact, and for a while it was fairly common on laptops. It was called IrDA, and though it was fairly short range you could use it to transfer files, establish a TCP/IP connection, etc.
I remember playing a Starcraft game with an iMac G3 and PowerBook G3. A friend and I used AppleTalk over IrDA. Unfortunately it was rather awkward since they had to line up, but we figured out you could bounce the infrared beam with mirrors. So we didn't need ethernet, we could play wirelessly...this was in 1998, long before 802.11b became mass-market.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
They're both part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
"Light" is almost always used to refer exclusively to the visible (and near-visible [IR, UV]) portion of the EM spectrum.
Well, to be pedantic, scientists often use "light" to refer to higher energy radiation too. It's not commonly used for wavelengths longer than far IR, but it is commonly used for X-ray and even extremely short wavelengths - like "synchrotron light".
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
for completeness' sake http://cictr.ee.psu.edu/CICTRnews/White%20LED/Researchers%20Envision%20an%20LED-Powered%20Wireless%20Network%20%20PwC%20TelcomDirectNews_com.htm
Come on!
Yes it says "light" in the title and ScuttleMonkey-added text. The very first sentence of the actual user submission specifies "visible light". Once that context is established, "light" is a perfectly valid shorthand way to refer to it, and is often (though admittedly not always) used in that way.
The enemies of Democracy are
1.) There is TCP/IP over Infrared (IrDA) and comes standard on Windows and works also in Linux.
http://web.pdx.edu/~mendyke/ip7780.html
2.) there are many laser link systems out there.
I even worked on one.
http://www.dnull.com/zebraresearch/company-mail.html
3.) The 802.11 standard also includes the 802.11 Infrared (IR) Physical Layer. 802.11 IR defines 1Mbps and 2Mbps operation by bouncing light off ceilings and walls to provide connectivity within a room or small office. This infrared version of the standard has been available since the initial release of the 802.11 standard in 1997.
4.) Spectrix Corporation of Mundelein, Illinois had a proprietary solution for this. I think they are out of business now.
http://books.google.com/books?id=QZrrXcs1R9gC&pg=RA1-PA207&lpg=RA1-PA207&dq=%22Spectrix+Corporation+%22&source=bl&ots=kMxMofcTd7&sig=qd4QvwoREWQloJKwnpmp63j-Z-I&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result
If you explore the link above from the book "Wireless Computing" By Ira Brodsky Published by John Wiley and Sons, 1997. This book goes in a lot of detail about many IP over optical solutions available at that time.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
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