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Replacing Fiber With 10 Gigabit/Second Wireless
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:02 PM
from the beam-will-also-cook-your-tv-dinner dept.
from the beam-will-also-cook-your-tv-dinner dept.
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."
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Hardware: Gigabit Wi-Fi On the Horizon 61 comments
alphadogg writes to mention that the same working group that brought you the standard for the 802.11n wireless communications is already poised to launch a gigabit Wi-Fi project. "Last year, group members formed the Very High Throughput (VHT) Study Group to explore changes to the 802.11 WLAN standard to support gigabit capacity. The study group is looking at doing so in two frequency bands, high-frequency 60GHz for relatively short ranges and under-6GHz for ranges similar to that of today's WLANs in the 5GHz band, 802.11a and 11n."
Submission: Replacing fiber with 10 gigabit/second wireless by Anonymous Coward
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point to point (Score:5, Funny)
so KFC then when a bird flies through the beam
Re:point to point, or from a lack of fiber in the (Score:2, Funny)
backbone, try Meta-muse-ul to restore regularity between bottlenecks and freely-flowing packets...
Re:point to point (Score:4, Funny)
Believe it or not, there is already franchise opportunities available [pornopizza.ca] in this market.
Parent
Call me when it's reliable (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Call me when it's reliable (Score:5, Interesting)
While there's certainly a engineering difference between a prototype and a consumer-ready model, most of the problems you mention probably won't apply to this. It's point-to-point (so, line-of-sight) communications, so it will require an unobstructed path. However, proper transmitters and receivers for line-of-sight communications won't have nearly the sort of interference problems you experience with something like a Bluetooth. Line-of-sight communications also means you can use quite efficient antennae, so should get quite good range.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
All of my experience with wireless devices is in consumer based products, I don't know a whole lot about point-to-point/line-of-sight wireless transmission -- I just assumed (don't hurt me!) that they were very similar.
Based on your comment it sounds like this type of implementation would be more reliable than the wireless I am familiar with; I'm interested enough to do some reading on point-to-point wireless transmission in general and in other specific applications.
Thanks for the info!
Re:Call me when it's reliable (Score:5, Informative)
what would be considred consumer grade wireless equipment can't hold a stick to true enterprice level equipment.
you talk about your wifi dropping out - hey i have the same thing with my WRT54G... but all of the aironet equipment i use never has issues.. but hey my 54g was 50$ compared to 800$
Parent
Enterprice (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, we have "enterprise" class WiFi that was just installed here in our warehouses not even a year ago and we have constant, brief outages.
And they paid probably about 500x what I would have paid for units at BestBuy.
Re:Call me when it's reliable (Score:5, Interesting)
I had lots of dropouts with my WRT54G also, until I switched *away* from the shit Linksys firmware to Tomato (currently running 1.07). It's been rock-solid ever since.
Just my two cents.. ;)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
yea i have been thinking about doing that.. but i'm just so tired when i get home.. i might have to play with that this weekend.. or sleep.. humm can i do this in my sleep? j/k
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They're very different beasts.
Unfortunately, as point-to-point or line-of-sight sort of implies, they're also completely useless in most consumer applications. Both transmitter and receiver have to point directly at one another. So it doesn't work like cellular, 802.11, BlueTooth, etc.
In fact, it'll probably never make it to consumer devices. We have a tough enough time with satellite television, which is sort of a sloppy line-of-sight transmission.
Re:Call me when it's reliable (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Most well established Universities have tunnels to support steam infrastructure, which just happen to also make great infrastructure for fiber.
Point-to-point is nice for the outlying buildings outside traditional infrastructure, but it will be a very long time before physical medium is replaced with a different technology.
Even with high end equipment we have problems with vegetation and weather causing issue with our point-to-point devices.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't consider university deployment to be consumer-grade.
There are some situations, like what you mentioned, where a consumer-level device might be useful. (However, currently it's line-of-sight on both ends using low-frequency lasers. That would require one transceiver for each connected house on top of that church tower!)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
My hope is that it would become a mutant bird with special powers (but only use them for good).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on the physical size of the signal and the redundancy. Obviously if you're relying on a single link that's physically roughly the size of the bird or smaller, the signal will be disrupted as long as the bird is in the beam (plus, probably, a short recovery time). It's as sure an outage as a backhoe taking out your fiber, although shorter-lived.
The researchers seem to have a pretty good idea of exactly where it's useful -- they don't really mention replacing backbones or end-user links, but using it
Re: (Score:2)
Also, depending on the power in the signal, it could be an interesting experience for the bird.
Re: (Score:2)
2. Even most LOS implementations aren't like a laser pointers; you get a little leeway.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
...someone else use the same model in a 90 foot radius
This made me laugh. I had to stop using a wireless mouse at school because I got so much 'noise' from the other 20 or 30 wireless mouses in the same classroom.
Re: (Score:2)
mouses
Re: (Score:2)
moose!
Re: (Score:2)
Meece
Re: (Score:2)
møøse
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I run a wireless network at home that goes through 4 walls before it hits my girlfriend's computer, and no problems there. Small house, yes, but it still works. I also have a wireless keyboard and mouse. Replacing batteries does suck, but when you're only replacing them once a month, it's really not that bad. Your experience with wireless has
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I still use a lot of wireless devices and they are a great tool! I use it at home for my network and I can browse easily and usually play online games without trouble. I still, and this is the key part here, don't replace my ethernet line to my web server or anything else I'd like to use with some sort of reliability.
That's what they are talking about here (replacing what would have been a fiber network with wireless), which I was at first against. However, according to a reply to my
Re: (Score:2)
We have a similar problem in our house, which is a 1938 adobe (with 18" thick walls). Wireless signals have a hard time penetrating that!
I solved the problem by adding a few Airport Express devices (as repeaters) to our Airport network.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't had any of the problems you've described, but I've got some input on them.
1a) If your microwave is interfering with your wireless network, you need a new microwave, or you need to move your wireless router. A properly shielded microwave won't spew enough radiation far enough to interfere with a proper network (I used to use my laptop next to the microwave while reheating things, with no problems).
1b) You could always upgrade to 802.11n and run on the 5 GHz band, which is less susceptible to interf
Limited use; maybe good for backhauls (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Its about time.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I spent a minute try'n to figure out
what meter this; if rhyming was your scheme
perhaps a parody you'd done a song
or some much-reforwarded meme.
but, alas, at last occurred to me
despite the sim'lar lengths of every line
the layout had no deep and thoughtful cause;
you randomly hit 'return' from time to time.
beam-will-also-cook-your-tv-dinner dept. (Score:2)
No, that's WiFi at 2.4GHz, shared with microwave ovens. This system operates at fifty times that frequency.
Re: (Score:2)
Infrared, which is above the frequency they're using, will cook your dinner too.
In fact, many RF frequencies are converted to heat by solid matter. Just because it's less efficient than the microwave oven frequency doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
As a sufferer of Crohn's Disease, I've been advised by my dietician to avoid foods that are high in fibre, as well as leafy greens and other similar foods, because they do not digest as thoroughly and can cause irritation in the lower intestines. For myself and as many as 600,000 individuals in North America alone, wireless technologies such as this will enable the living of healthy, normal lives by replacing networks that are high in fibre with networks more suited to the special diets our conditions requi
an idea someone else has probably already had (Score:2)
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)?
Re:an idea someone else has probably already had (Score:5, Funny)
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)?
Yes, a proof of concept is online at http://youtube.com [youtube.com]. Originally they used /dev/random, but that is a useful resource. Using Britney Spears clips with user comments enabled allows for truly useless noise.
Parent
Re:an idea someone else has probably already had (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
How about blimps or other airborrne platforms.... (Score:2)
... 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.
Re:How about blimps or other airborrne platforms.. (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
Don't quite understand TFA... (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
Are the lasers that they are using in the microwave range?
I certainly hope not! I put aluminium foil in my microwave range once and that wasn't a pretty sight. I can't imagine the damage caused when lasers and microwave ranges meet.
Who needs the LHC? Toss in some non-dairy creamer and I could easily see a black hole forming. under the above scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
They "modulated data on two low-frequency laser beams" to create a 100GHz (3mm) interference pattern, but doesn't specify what frequency those laser beams were at.
It says they use "off-the-shelf optical telecommunication components" which normally operates from 850nm - 1550nm or 193THz - 352THz (IR). If that's truly the case, perhaps the article is mistaken and they used two higher frequency lasers to create a lower frequency wave/interference that can more easily trav
Re: (Score:2)
What's new about it? (Score:2)
>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 gue
Re:What's new about it? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, this is millimetre wave. It's NOT microwave. Millimetre wave is kind of a weird area that's not really radio as we know it, but isn't quite optical either. It's not used much because it's a real pain to generate a modulated signal in that region.
From the article it sounds like what these guys did is used two HIGHER frequency off the shelf laser beams and mixed them (optically). The interference between the two produces a millimetre wave signal. That IS cool, when you think about it, and it means that a big, neglected region of the spectrum can now be utilized cheaply.
Also, since it's high frequency point to point you don't get bombarded by significant amounts of radiation unless you stand directly between the transmitter and receiver. For high power, long distance applications both of those would tend to be on towers or high roofs.
Canada has long used a system of microwave towers to carry telecommunications across the country. The radio system was much cheaper than laying (and maintaining) thousands of kilometres of cable.
Parent
I'll still take fiber (Score:2)