The second episode of the Google Moonshot podcast covers this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaYGw5_PE0
Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
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Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#12It’ll go down at the first sign of rain. We’ve been there with microwave internet.
The implication being that you know more about this technology than then people building it and funding it.
Being that I've not seen an actual technology relase from this company so far it's up to them to quell the doubts.
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#13RONJA[0] with lasers? >smileFree 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.
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#14There'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.
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#15This 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.
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#16Wait, "Google X" is now just known as "X"? So there is a separate "X" from Alphabet and "X" from tweet all day guy?
What this means is that in the next 5 years Microsoft will name 3 different things X.
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#17Apparently 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...
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#18It’ll go down at the first sign of rain. We’ve been there with microwave internet.
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.
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.
Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
#19This 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.
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.