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Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

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Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#211

Post by XorNot »

miohtama wrote: post #103
cogman10 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

It's worth noting that free space laser comms would also have this problem though: the atmosphere has dust, and any IR detector will see bloom and reflection of dust from a laser which will draw a straight line right back to the emitter.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#212

Post by dataviz1000 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #189
femto wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand if communication is possible that puts a leash on this dynamic I'm a bit more pessimistic than that. I think the driver for autonomy will be that the speed at which things happen on the battlefield. People being attacked with automated weapons might not be able to make response related decisions fast enough. The automation will be in place to enable a rapid response. It will become an arms race in…

The phrase you're looking for is OODA loop, popularized in the 80s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategi...

> Boyd’s Law of Iteration: speed of iteration beats quality of iteration [0]

[0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#213

Post by swarnie »

jerlam wrote: post #71
seanp2k2 wrote: post #38

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,…

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.

It goes both way doesn't it.

I've looked up some non-shitty parts of the UK with 1gb/1gb fibre for about $40 a month (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol ect) and all do seem to have population densities about twice that of Silicon Valley.

Then again my village with a population of about 300 does as well so i think it comes down to centralised investment.

Does state or federal not offer incentive to connect low density communities for the good of teh wider economy?

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#214

Post by bialpio »

vel0city wrote: post #181
bialpio wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet probably everyone you know in EU has a cheaper Internet per GB that folks in the US. I have 2 SIM cards, one provider charges me $10/GB, while the other has a 2-GB packet for $6.

Both of those prices are considerably more expensive than what I pay for service in the US. Even the cheaper one is more than 2x more expensive than what I pay per gig, including unlimited calls and texts + roaming to a lot of North America.

Who's your provider if you don't mind me asking?

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#215

Post by debugnik »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #188
bagels wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this meme always pasted in to threads about missile guidance?

Because it’s a classic gag, even if it’s out of place on HN https://youtu.be/bZe5J8SVCYQ?feature=shared

Not just an online gag, that's related to an excerpt of an alleged December 1997 issue of "Association of Air Force Missileers" on the GLCM Guidance System. Likely submitted in jest.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050514035446/http://www.afmiss...

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#216

Post by fc417fc802 »

kazinator wrote: post #172
gonzo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you license ... light?

How do you license focused beams of microwaves? Supposedly in some jurisdictions, if you aim a microwave beam across the window to another building, you need a license. (Because the telco monopolist has has some government bureaucrats in their back pocket or something.) Could you get around this if it's light? People will license anything. Something you can get over the counter in one country needs a prescription in…

I wouldn't put it past the FCC to require a license for your car headlights if you hook a transceiver up to them.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#217

Post by iam-TJ »

refulgentis wrote: post #23
fsh wrote: post #15

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.

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 ge…

For Starlink the User Terminal (antenna a.k.a. "Dishy") is a phased array. It tracks the satellite as it passes from west to east. Each satellite is in view for around 15 seconds - the phased array instantly flips from east to west and acquires the new in-view satellite in microseconds. There's no degradation in almost all 'flips' especially if the U.T. has an unobstructed view of the sky.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#218

Post by looofooo0 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #13

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.wik…

There have been some recent advances which greatly improved the optical bandwidth and make such projects much more feasible cost wise: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01201-7

Single digit amount of photons is needed per bit.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#219

Post by gherkinnn »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #41

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-acc…

At the same time, fibre-optic drones have being successfully fielded by Russia and now increasingly by Ukraine. Immune to jamming with a minimum range of 10km.

There is no way these technologies won't be at least trialled for mil use, not when electronic warfare is employed to this degree.

https://thedefensepost.com/2025/01/08/ukraine-fiber-optic-dr...

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#220

Post by bozhark »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #41

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-acc…

Line of sight is not immune to jamming, in fact it’s susceptible to more.

Physically.

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