Replacing Fiber With 10 Gigabit/Second Wireless 107
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."
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: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!)