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Microwave Comms Betwen Population Centers Could Be Key To Easing Internet Bottlenecks
itwbennett writes: Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Duke University recently looked at the main causes of Internet latency and what it would take to achieve speed-of-light performance. The first part of the paper, titled Towards a Speed of Light Internet, is devoted to finding out where the slowdowns are coming from. They found that the bulk of the delay comes from the latency of the underlying infrastructure, which works in a multiplicative way by affecting each step in the request. The second part of the paper proposes what turns out to be a relatively cheap and potentially doable solution to bring Internet speeds close to the speed of light for the vast majority of us. The authors propose creating a network that would connect major population centers using microwave networks.
ATT had the same idea. In about 1945.
I can make a Hot Pocket WITH the internet! Genius.
So....they're bringing back MCI?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
They propose shifting more latency sensitive bits to microwave links. Specifically DNS and TCP Handshakes ya know those top 2 DDOS vectors. We already have protocols to tunnel through DNS. I'm sure that will go so well.
No sir I dont like it.
.. why we would want to use microwaves for this. Fiber is shielded, and capable of higher throughput. While I can understand using microwaves to communicate with satellites, I don't see why we would use them for communications between two population centers.
This might just be my dislike of wireless in general, but I don't see how this could solve latency issues...
Microwave networks are extremely susceptible to rain fade, and as such are not a good choice for important data links like these would be. We already have a technology which allows signals to travel at the speed of light and is immune to weather, solar radiation, and nearly anything else short of a major earthquake. It's called single mode fiber optic cable.
... that were slowly dismantled in the 90s because fibre optic was supposedly better would it?
You have to laugh. Another generation comes along and re-invents the wheel. Again.
Some microwave frequencies are sensitive to the weather.
I'm not sure if there are any that are weather-insensitive to be useful in a thunderstorm, snowstorm, or in heavy low-lying clouds/foggy conditions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Fiber is amply fast.
The bottleneck is the cavalier attitude of web designers to network resources. You do not need to load 25 different URLs (DNS lookups, plus autoplay video and all the usual clickbait junk) to show me a weather forecast. Or a Slashdot article, for that matter...
...laura
Mesh networks, peer-to-peer between nodes (homes/businesses,etc), would be useful for offloading non-time critical applications such as file transfers and open up opportunities for local delivery of online services that eliminate the need to send traffic through major choke points.
I know exactly where. From the 80% of traffic that is useless ads/malware. Oh, and cats. Too many fluffy cat pictures
In Lousiville, CO, I lived in one of the few neighborhoods that was skipped over for broadband in 1999. Sprint setup a microwave service that filled in the gap. Bandwidth was awesome - I was getting 10-30 MBs regularly. The downside was the latency - 100 ms ping times were the norm. I remember trying to play Duke Nuke 'Em with friends and having the unfair "advantage" of disappearing regularly when my client didn't ping back in time. Being line-of-site, there were also issues with trees occasionally swaying in front of the dish (a pizza box attached to my roof) and snow blocking the signal.
As others have pointed out, microwave Internet isn't something new and, unfortunately, in the real world isn't a perfect solution.
-Chris
MCI is part of Verizon now. So even in 2015, the biggest competitor of AT&T is still (the parent of) MCI.
Remove all the government spying crap. That would probably speed it up a bit.
Canada had a microwave network across the nation by the end of the 1950s.
https://www.historicacanada.ca...
Just use the frigging dark fiber that is already running between them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not even lasers. Hackers have been doing this with freaking LED's for long range networking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Short of really massive weather conditions they are reliable as hell and dont require clearing all the trees out of the frenel area in front of the dish.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
caniuse.com's background-size chart claims that Safari for iOS has defects in its handling of background-size: cover.
You made my day! :)))
You have no idea how many wars were fought over: "WHY IS THE SITE SO SLOW?!? Google's fast! Why can't you make us fast like Google?!?"
Yeah, that was a real mystery to all of us who weren't in product or ads...
Buffering and switching latency is the main source of delay, not signal latency in the copper and fiber. Microwaves would do exactly nothing to improve the switching and buffering latency. If anything they'd make it worse: light in fiber travels much further than line-of-sight microwave before it has to be regenerated with another delay.
Who peer-reviewed this paper? Did they know the first thing about networking?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Why would ISP's want to upgrade to provide us with higher speeds? They've already been heard saying what we have is enough?
They will continue business as usual overcharging us for their wares and delivering nothing.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Yeah, then we could point the laser at a glass tube to keep the rain out. Then we could make that tube flexible so it can go around the curve of the earth and we don't need to build a tower. Hey what do you know, we just made fiber.
You can put up a lot of microwave transmitters, and so long as your receiver is designed to be able to pick out the sources - much like a camera can have more than one element registering 'red' - you can use the same frequency range for all of them.
As long as neither the receiver or transmitter are moving significantly, this isn't technologically impossible.
Talk to me about the noise floor.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You can make money with arbitrage, and do society a benefit at the same time.
I remember getting a request for a cluster that was proposed to be split between a midwest USA site and London. Conversation was something like this (not exact numbers, but I did do the math at the time):
PHB: We need less than 50ms latency.
Me: Can't be done. We're at around 120ms right now with 10ms jitter using VPN.
PHB: What about MPLS?
Me: That might get us to 115ms with 5ms jitter.
PHB: Well, we have to come up with a solution. What else can we do?
Me: Slap Einstein? This is a physics problem, not an IT problem.
PHB: This is OUR problem to solve.
Me: Ok, if we buy our own glass, lay it in a straight line between us and London, which also includes some sort of housing for it that I don't know exists that would prevent issues with freezing/melting/icebergs, we'd end up with 72 ms.
PHB: So there really isn't anything we can do...*starts walking away*
Me: Hold on! I have another idea! We can tunnel through the earth, and skip the water issue if we can come up with a new type of shielding that can withstand tectonic forces and heat. That will allow us to get to 55 ms since we're not dealing with the curvature of the earth! Will that work?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.