[HN Gopher] Alphabet spins out Taara - Internet over lasers
___________________________________________________________________
Alphabet spins out Taara - Internet over lasers
Author : tadeegan
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-03-17 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (x.company)
(TXT) w3m dump (x.company)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| It'll go down at the first sign of rain. We've been there with
| microwave internet.
| panarky wrote:
| That's an incredibly insightful observation, I'm sure they've
| never considered that and will be really disappointed the first
| time there's rain or fog.
| standardUser wrote:
| The implication being that you know more about this technology
| than then people building it and funding it.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Being that I've not seen an actual technology relase from
| this company so far it's up to them to quell the doubts.
| matt3210 wrote:
| What about Waymo?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| At one point we bought a fancy (for the time) microwave link
| to cover a distance of about 3km. We specifically asked
| whether it would be affected by weather conditions. We were
| assured multiple times in the most confident of terms that it
| would not be a problem, the technology was tested and such
| eventualities accounted for with various features and
| failsafes.
|
| The thing proceeded to go down every time it rained, and no
| amount of tweaking settings, power, phase, polarity or
| orientation helped. This is the manufacturer/vendor doing the
| tweaks, mind you, not clueless me (I wouldn't dream of
| touching this arcane technology I knew nothing about).
|
| In the end we ditched the microwave and went with a good old
| copper link which worked without a hitch regardless of the
| weather.
|
| So since you are, in your own sarcastic way, asking how I
| know, this is how: from experience. I don't know about the
| technology but I do know about when they promise you it will
| work in the rain.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Rain fade is sort of a solved problem in microwave comms
| [1]. Earlier than that, it was predictable.
|
| Laser comms aren't going to be useful in Houston. They'll
| probably be a game changer for swarms of drones at
| altitude, anything in space and the sorts of arid, weather-
| stable places we like to build data centres.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_fade
| walrus01 wrote:
| By the way you say you "bought a fancy microwave link" it
| sounds like you were bamboozled by the vendor. Exactly what
| manufacturer, model of radios, antenna configuration and
| other configuration was this that failed to work in rain?
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| I know nothing about this technology but there are ways to get
| around similar issues. For example, twisted pair cables encode
| data as the DIFFERENCE between the two signals as those signals
| should be affected by the same noise sources. They could also
| transmit multiple redundant flows and error correct on the
| other side with a voting protocol or checksumming.
| card_zero wrote:
| Fog is a bigger problem, it says here. (Also heavy snow, per
| the RONJA link in the other comment.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
| range_optical_wireless_co...
|
| This problem was possibly solved in the ten years since it
| defeated those four or five startups? Or not solved, who can
| say.
| echoangle wrote:
| The differential signalling only helps if the noise offsets
| both signals in the same direction though. If it just
| attenuates (which fog for example will do to optical
| signals), it won't help you. And the other method you
| described could work (depending on the SNR of course, at some
| point effectively no signal will come through the fog) but
| will lower data rate.
| culi wrote:
| I haven't heard of microwave internet. Any recommended
| readings?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission
| bilalel wrote:
| They seem to take poor weather condition into account as they
| reserve an amount of power to keep the link up and stable
| (equipment would be capable of pushing up to 75km) Those were
| data from first tests they did, might be interesting if they
| can confirm that in future updates.
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| Great for space
| cma wrote:
| Wait, "Google X" is now just known as "X"? So there is a separate
| "X" from Alphabet and "X" from tweet all day guy?
| pityJuke wrote:
| Since 2016 [0]
|
| [0]: https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/18/technology/google-x-new-
| log...
| RajT88 wrote:
| What this means is that in the next 5 years Microsoft will name
| 3 different things X.
| darth_aardvark wrote:
| They only need 1 more to hit that, since they got 2 in the
| Xbox Series X.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| . . . and put them in a box.
| andrewl-hn wrote:
| The most peculiar detail: at the bottom of https://x.company
| website in the socials column they literally have a link "X
| (not us)" to https://www.twitter.com/theteamatx
| srameshc wrote:
| I thought this was a link to X(twitter) but this is a Google X
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Big tech deserves to burn for their evolution in naming alone.
| almosthere wrote:
| Unfortunately anyone out of Google is not ambitious enough. They
| can't execute. Tiny steps don't accomplish anything.
| xnx wrote:
| The second episode of the Google Moonshot podcast covers this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaYGw5_PE0
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| RONJA[0] with lasers? >smile<
|
| Free space optics always seemed like a neat idea. For space-based
| communication, particularly if your "mission" involves as little
| stray emission as possible, I would think free space optics would
| be a win.
|
| I would assume there's more error correction, but otherwise I
| wonder how dramatically this differs from modulating light on a
| fiber. It seems like a similar problem.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA
| xiphias2 wrote:
| There's no mention of Starlink, the main competitor (not fiber).
|
| Whenever I travel and see the high latencies in hotel, I'm
| waiting for being able to Starlink from my mobile phone.
|
| It requires huge antennas on the satellites, but we're getting
| closer to that with every Strarship launch.
| matt3210 wrote:
| starlink is a competitor of T_Mobile, not Taara. Taara is just
| a supplier for T-Mobile (example).
| fsh wrote:
| This section from the marketing blurb doesn't sound too
| promising:
|
| _When atmospheric conditions disrupt the light, our adaptive
| rate and hybrid architecture maintains the connection, with
| minimal downtime._
|
| In the long run, all these wireless technologies (satellite or
| optical/microwave terrestrial links) will have a very hard time
| competing with simply laying down some optical fiber.
| darksaints wrote:
| Optical fiber is absolutely the simplest and best option for
| almost any form of long distance connectivity. Maybe this
| technology will become cost/performance competitive in about 15
| years after the HFT firms have invested billions trying to
| extract an extra cent out of our financial markets.
| culi wrote:
| That's not the market they're going for though. They're more of
| a competitor to Starlink
|
| There's also obvious applications to places where weather is
| more predictable. There's plenty of areas and small towns in
| the Great Basin region that have basically no internet. This
| would be a quick and easy way to set those places up with
| internet with more reliability than something like starlink
| fsh wrote:
| The problem with selling inferior technologies is that sooner
| or later people are going to stop using them (even in the
| Grad Basin region). Not exactly a recipe for success.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| But why would these not be places already served by
| terrestrial wireless internet service providers? It seems
| like it would be much easier and generally more attractive to
| serve locations like this using, for example, 5 GHz.
|
| Normally, the lack of (near) line-of-sight is one of the
| biggest limiting to those sorts of deployments, but that
| would also have to be solved for any place being served with
| FSO.
| walrus01 wrote:
| a point to point terrestrial bridge large piece of equipment
| that costs $5,000+, needs a professional to install it, and
| works on either free space optics or V-band or E-band radio
| is not in any way a competitor to starlink. It's more a place
| to take a 1 to 10 Gbps ethernet connection as a link between
| two towers or roofs that can 'see' each other as an
| alternative to where laying fiber may be cost prohibitive or
| would take too long to build (or both).
|
| Assuming this thing doesn't utterly fail in rain at a
| moderate distance, this would be something you use to feed a
| POP which then redistributes service to end users by some
| totally other technology (5/6 GHz band PTMP radio system,
| GPON, XGSPON, G.fast on copper, docsis3/docsis3.1, etc)
| refulgentis wrote:
| It's interesting at 36 to look back at what I think would
| disrupt connectivity a decade ago:
|
| - Google Fiber (it wasn't possible to do it cheaper than
| incumbents, so it devolved to standard incumbent x why would
| 40% margin company invest billions to get Comcast's peak profit
| margin of ~15% profit)
|
| - Starry Internet (too expensive to build out, I have it and
| it's good, but the company certainly didn't scale)
|
| - 5G in general (strictly inferior to incumbent, speed isn't
| faster, latency is higher, not as reliable)
|
| It's hard for me to wrap my mind around why this would work at
| all, sounds like a more-susceptible-to-bad-conditions version
| of Starry.
|
| I keep wondering how people make Starlink work, my
| understanding is the connection degrades then stops then
| reconnects every...idk, 5 minutes? as the satellites go
| overhead.
| miloignis wrote:
| From my perspective, Google Fiber 100% disrupted connectivity
| - it woke the incumbents up and made them offer competitive
| Fiber. In that sense, they succeeded! My last three
| connections from my last three ISPs have all been gigabit
| (one of which was Google Fiber, easily the best internet I've
| ever had). I think they're expanding again, too, though I
| wish they had stayed as aggressive with rollout as they
| started.
| refulgentis wrote:
| That's a really good point, back home, Verizon didn't
| bother with Fios investment until then.
| jerlam wrote:
| Ironically, Google Fiber purchased a wireless provider -
| Webpass - back in 2016 which is deployed in parallel to
| their fiber offerings.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > 5G in general (strictly inferior to incumbent, speed isn't
| faster, latency is higher, not as reliable)
|
| I'm guessing this is a US thing? In Europe, 5G is definitely
| faster while latency is on par with 4G. YMMMV between EU
| countries though.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You're right, it's definitely better than 4G, my wording
| was unclear, more in the sense of "Would I make this my
| home ISP?" than "how did 5G go?" (I would have thought cell
| providers would have 20-30% of the market now, ah, the
| follys of youth...)
| calebio wrote:
| > I keep wondering how people make Starlink work, my
| understanding is the connection degrades then stops then
| reconnects every...idk, 5 minutes? as the satellites go
| overhead.
|
| That is not a correct understanding for how the Starlink
| network behaves today[0]. While I can't speak for using it
| outside of the U.S., I have not faced any interruptions
| outside of a few times during very severe weather.
|
| [0] in the early days of the constellation, there were sub-
| second or a few second drops when there was no satellite
| overhead. But this dropped off very quickly once the
| constellation size increased.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I see, tyty (been wondering for quite some time)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The key breakthrough for 5G was allowing ~10x the number of
| devices to connect to a node compared to 4G. 5G is what
| allowed the toppling of data caps that was by far the #1
| consumer complaint for years. 4G just couldn't handle heavy
| loads well, so data caps were needed to constrain demand.
|
| Teleco's aren't going to say this out load, but it's the real
| reason why they were so celebratory about 5G, despite it
| coming off like just a renamed 4G to the average user.
| stnmtn wrote:
| Why would they not be loud about it? I think "We've built
| out 5G so we can get rid of your data caps!" is a message
| any telecom would want to broadcast out, unless I'm missing
| something
| conception wrote:
| They don't want to get rid of your data caps. They want
| to get rid of their data bandwidth limitations.
| jampekka wrote:
| > 4G just couldn't handle heavy loads well, so data caps
| were needed to constrain demand.
|
| In many parts of the world uncapped data has been the norm
| since around GPRS.
| echoangle wrote:
| Could that be because they aren't as densely populated by
| users so even if everyone with a phone has no data cap,
| they won't overload the network? Which countries were
| that for example?
| mattlondon wrote:
| Some of their use-case they are crowing about on their site
| cover _temporary_ things: back haul for major-but-temporary
| events, tethered-drone-mounted units for emergency disaster
| recover where a cell site is taken out etc. Those are the sorts
| of things where laying fibre 20km for use for just a day or two
| just isn 't going to happen, but a temporary laser link that
| you can get up and running in a hour or two would be great.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| You can say the same thing about running wired ethernet to your
| TV in the living room. It's simpler and more reliable than
| wifi. But wifi is much easier and quicker to install. Which one
| do most people use?
| fsh wrote:
| For most users (me included), there is zero difference in
| user experience between using wifi or Ethernet for their TV.
| Otherwise, running wired Ethernet would probably be a lot
| more popular.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| So you think. You may be right, but most users won't even
| realize that a good chunk of their "buffering" / "Internet
| is slow today" / "Netflix is broken today" problems might
| just be a WiFi issue, and it would go away if they used a
| wired connection.
| slowtrek wrote:
| _"... very hard time competing with simply laying down some
| optical fiber. "_
|
| You end up learning this in your own home. Some things are fine
| with a wired ethernet connection, it's really only my laptop
| and phone that use wifi.
| light_triad wrote:
| Apparently the biggest problems are line of sight interruptions
| and cost:
|
| > The team has figured out how to compensate for potential line-
| of-sight interruptions like bird flights, rain, and wind. (Fog is
| the biggest impediment)
|
| > "It's fast and reliable but quite expensive." He says he spent
| around $30,000 for the last light bridge setup he bought from
| Alphabet for testing.
|
| Interesting that Meta was working on similar tech but abandoned
| the project:
|
| Google's Taara Hopes to Usher in a New Era of Internet Powered by
| Light
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-google-taara-chip-inte...
|
| More on Meta's internet via lasers project:
|
| https://www.wired.com/2016/01/facebook-zuckerberg-internet-o...
| pmcf wrote:
| Line of sight issues are simply a wattage issue. A gigawatt
| laser is impervious to rain, a bird, a flock of birds, a bird
| and the tree it sitting in. Probably the entire forest. Let's
| just say there are some solutions well in hand.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I like your first sentence as a truism.
| walrus01 wrote:
| $30,000 is quite nuts when you can buy a 71 to 86 GHz band, 10
| Gbps full duplex radio bridge for under $6000 today. And it'll
| likely not completely collapse and fail to link at 1.2 km in
| moderate rain.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _In the same way fiber optic cables in the ground use light to
| carry data, Taara uses narrow, invisible light beams to transmit
| information through the air..._
|
| If the light is "invisible" then is it even light? I looked it up
| and it's infrared.
|
| Do we consider UV and infrared to be light? Or are they UV and
| infrared period, in _contrast_ to light? I mean, nobody would
| ever call x-rays or radio waves "light". You'd never say "it's
| emitting infrared light", would you?
|
| Or do they just not want to use the word "radiation" in their
| marketing, because that sounds scary and cancer-causing?
|
| I'm just curious, since "invisible light" immediately jumped out
| to me as a contradiction in terms.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| > Do we consider UV and infrared to be light? Or are they UV
| and infrared period, in contrast to light? I mean, nobody would
| ever call x-rays or radio waves "light". You'd never say "it's
| emitting infrared light", would you?
|
| Yes, we do. No, it's not. Yes, they do. Yes, I would.
| crazygringo wrote:
| People really say "it's emitting x-ray light" or "emitting
| radio light"?
|
| I've never in my life heard that. That sounds completely
| wrong to my ears. (Which is why "invisible light" sounded so
| wrong, too.)
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You are right that people more frequently say x-ray
| radiation. But it's the same thing. It's literally the same
| thing, just at a different frequency. In the same way that
| we have words for ice, water, and steam, but they're still
| the same thing, just at different temperatures.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While "X-ray light" or "radio light" have never been used
| in any widespread terminology, the existence of "invisible
| light" has become known at the beginning of the 19th
| century, when the terms "infrared light" and "ultraviolet
| light" have been coined for it.
|
| "Invisible light" is light that is invisible for humans,
| but which is visible for many animals and for many of the
| devices that are designed to detect visible light.
| Traditionally, "invisible light" was distinguished from
| X-rays (with higher frequency) and radiant heat (with lower
| frequency), because those required different kinds of
| emitting and detecting devices than those designed for
| light.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In the traditional terminology, "ultraviolet" and "infrared"
| are abbreviations for "ultraviolet light" and "infrared
| light", so ultraviolet and infrared were definitely always
| classified as kinds of light.
|
| However, what was initially called "infrared light" is what
| is called now "near infrared". What is called now "far
| infrared" was traditionally called "radiant heat", which is a
| term that dates from before it became understood that both
| radiant heat and light are electromagnetic waves.
|
| The traditional divisions between radio waves, radiant heat,
| light and X rays were determined by the fact that each of
| these 4 required different kinds of emitting and detecting
| devices. However the evolution of technology has extended the
| ranges for each kind of emitter and detector, so now the
| ranges of the corresponding kinds of devices are overlapping,
| so any precise thresholds in the frequency ranges are only
| conventional.
| kevindamm wrote:
| Yes, light is any transmission of photons, and the visible
| spectrum is only a tiny slice of that.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| When I came to Silicon Valley in the early 2010s and realized
| that all of the king's horses and all of the king's men could not
| defeat the scourge that is the US ISP oligopoly even in their own
| backyards, I knew it was pointless to ever hope for real FTTH in
| Bay Area markets in the next couple of decades.
|
| Wireless solutions have orders of magnitude less bandwidth than
| fiber, and you can run lots of fiber in a bundle, whereas there's
| limited spectrum and only one already-saturated RF environment
| going wireless.
|
| Only in the past few _months_ has Comcast (the only actual high-
| speed internet option in our fairly typical Silicon Valley
| suburban neighborhood of ~$2.5m average homes) deigned to offer
| upload speeds greater than the previous 35mbit cap...now we can
| push 200mbit for $120 /mo (for 1.2tb monthly combined U+D, add
| $20 for "unlimited") and you usually have to buy a new modem even
| if your old one supported the tech, since they only support
| specific firmware on specific SKUs. Meanwhile, GFiber is offering
| 8gbps symmetrical for $150/mo unmetered.
|
| Reminder also that Ricochet was wireless internet in _1994_ on
| 900mhz ISM using FHSS in the Valley. Ooh how far we 've come in
| 30 years.
| ecshafer wrote:
| In Silicon Valley, in a neighborhood of $2.5M homes, and thus
| household incomes on average of probably $600k+. It should be
| possible to get a fiber rollout, they aren't that expensive.
| Make a neighborhood ISP, or try and get a municipal ISP.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I seem to recall a few different "if we get this many signed
| up" flyers (more East Bay than South) trying to organize
| something along those lines - maybe the name was Compass?
| Also try Sonic and see if they have anything for you.
|
| I've had ATT gigabit fiber for ~6(?) years now. And for the
| first time ever (started with a 300 baud modem in 1985),
| similar to recent CPU releases, don't feel a compelling need
| to upgrade. In fact, would consider 0.5 Gbps if it offered
| substantial savings, since we don't fully use 1 GB. But no
| caps, and getting measured throughput of 850+ MB/s for $85
| (started at $70) is affordable (for SV) and has been very
| reliable other than when the very-early transceiver they
| installed (I was one of the first to get it) got waterlogged
| and shorted out - the replacement was installed indoors, so
| that won't happen again.
|
| I'm not a fan of ATT's corporate policies by any means. But
| the alternatives are, well.. Comcast with a much worse
| service (not symmetrical) or some flavor of 5G.
| jerlam wrote:
| Silicon Valley is an aberration due to its low housing density.
| Places with more apartments and condos are much more likely to
| have infrastructure improvements since you can reach a lot more
| customers with a lot less money.
|
| I live a little north of you, and had Webpass (wireless) in
| 2012 - $50/mo for 100 Mbps. Now it's $70/mo for 1 Gbps, but I'm
| with another wireless ISP for $35/mo for 500 Mbps.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I'm low key afraid that this stuff is gonna get popular for .mil
| usage.
|
| Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms
| of jamming. Its usage dots the sci books I've read over the
| years, but almost always for scary reasons.
|
| Here's the Navy today announcing work on AirBorne System for
| Optical Relay and Broadcast (ABSORB), a (for now) low-cost
| prototype one-to-many (I maybe mis-inferring what multi-access
| means?) relayable free space system, https://defence-blog.com/us-
| navy-plans-to-revolutionize-nava...
| whatever1 wrote:
| But smoke/cloud kills them.
| lutherqueen wrote:
| How is better communication scary for military? The weapons
| themselves are
| FlyingBears wrote:
| Jam resistant comms are critical for drones, and other
| precision weapons and their infrastructure. Even if line of
| sight is interrupted modern drones can return to signal
| nowadays, relay information, and return to target with
| corrections. You may not need optical cable anymore
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| I expect drones will become fire-and-forget in two to three
| years. They won't be jammable because the pilot is in the
| drone.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Fire-and-forget drones already exist. They are called
| missiles.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Should the military not have internet? If laser based internet
| is better than satellite or microwave or wireless (I assume the
| military uses these three). Then isn't that good?
| geek_at wrote:
| Not if Trump has control over them
| r14c wrote:
| That's the interesting paradox of technological
| development. If it's out of the bag, then it's out of bag,
| but that cuts both ways. You can never control who will
| gain access to advancements. Even if you trust the
| custodians now, you don't know who they will be in the
| future, &c. Eventually you end up at a fork: either pursue
| and endless technological arms race or find some way to
| build lasting cooperative and peaceful relationships. As
| they say, the surest way to destroy your enemy is to make
| them your friend. Still a massive challenge, but presumably
| that's why empires eventually always fail. They don't know
| how to make friends.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| There are no warrior cultures in space.
| spwa4 wrote:
| I think you're too late. Pretty sure the military has line-of-
| sight free-space-optics to satellites since at least the second
| Iraq war.
|
| One can only wonder how small the "receivers" (routers, really)
| have gotten by now.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| Cubesats carry laser comms if that's what you mean.
| echoangle wrote:
| Those work in vacuum though so you need a bit less laser
| power. The atmosphere attenuates your signal if you're
| doing ground to ground or ground to aircraft links so you
| probably need a bit more laser power. But I agree that
| that's probably not the difficult thing about the whole
| system.
| umvi wrote:
| > Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many
| forms of jamming
|
| The most powerful weapons on earth already are immune to
| jamming. ICBMs use celestial navigation (pictures of the stars)
| to course-correct, which is a form of navigation you cannot
| jam.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Damn guess we have to blow up the stars
|
| ...you know, for defense
| echoangle wrote:
| Or create a lot of artificial ones to confuse the missile.
| rapind wrote:
| Swarms to block the cameras maybe?
|
| At this point though, couldn't you just blow up your own
| country and thus accelerate warming so much as to doom
| the rest of humanity in a dozen years? I might have read
| the wrong article on that though so don't quote me.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Can you imagine if someone just turned off the sky?
| runako wrote:
| _Spin_ by Robert Charles Wilson is based on this premise.
| faraaz98 wrote:
| Who are you? Cixin Liu?
| sunshinerag wrote:
| The universe winks for thee.
| echoangle wrote:
| This form of navigation is probably only accurate enough for
| nuclear weapons, you're not going to get meter-Range CEPs
| with that. You probably have to select a city you want to
| hit.
| cogman10 wrote:
| While you probably can't target a cigarette butt on the
| street, you could definitely hit a building. Especially if
| the ICBM is paired with image recognition (which it has
| already for star nav) and/or backup positioning mechanisms
| like cell tower locations or well-known broadcasting tower
| locations (think television stations).
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| To risk being pedantic, US SLBMs (Tridents) indeed use
| stellar updates for their inertial guidance system.
|
| Our ICBMs have no update mechanism at all. Once they're out
| of the silo, they're completely on their own.
| sorokod wrote:
| Something similar was available since the previous century for
| ship to ship communications where there is a line of sight.
|
| Such communications can't be intercepted or triangulated.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Free space optics were attempted extensively in the ISP space
| 15, 20 years ago for FDD 1 Gbps links at short distances roof
| to roof in major metro areas, they're EXTREMELY vulnerable to
| falling over in rain/snow conditions, and path length
| limitations, compared to 71 to 86 GHz millimeter wave (using a
| 2000 MHz wide FDD channel going each way in a high/low split).
| I'm very skeptical.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm low key afraid that this stuff is gonna get popular for
| .mil usage._
|
| They've probably had it for decades. Laser communication was
| being used by commercial TV stations in the U.S. in the 1990's.
| WNBC-TV in New York used a laser to transmit video from its
| Manhattan skyline camera in New Jersey back to 30 Rock.
|
| I have a vague notion that it didn't work great in all weather
| conditions, but it was a long time ago.
| cogman10 wrote:
| LOS communications has been around for a long time now in the
| form of microwave towers. [1]
|
| But further, jamming is still doable, just not with a portable
| electronic device. Stir up some dust and all the sudden coms
| are down.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission
| miohtama wrote:
| I was doing communications in military. For temporary
| networks, we used microwave links and they requires line of
| sight. The reason to use direct link is that missiles can be
| easily targeted to any radio source you can hear and take
| down the network.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, I was aware of this because of work with
| telecommunications in rural locations. Nobody is burying a
| cable over a mountain, that's too expensive and too much
| work. So instead, they'll setup microwave towers. Being on
| a mountain has the benefit that you are already in elevated
| locations that are easy to shoot a phone signal across the
| range.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Shoot a laser pointer at the receiver and there's a good
| chance you have jammed the thing.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| There's already military usage of similar devices. I wouldn't
| be surprised if Taara has a supplier that also supplies several
| militaries.
| fweimer wrote:
| What's so innovative about this? The distance? Some sort of mesh
| routing? Point-to-point optical wireless links have been
| available commercially for quite a while.
| wmf wrote:
| They're claiming 10x longer distance than other FSO links I've
| seen.
| numbers wrote:
| oh... X.company is not X fka Twitter
| DoctorOW wrote:
| In the footer of the website they link to their profile: "X
| (not us)"
| kazinator wrote:
| Is line of sight light spectrum subject to any
| permissions/licensing like radio/microwave? If not, that is
| significant.
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