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Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

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Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#71

Post by jerlam »

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.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#72

Post by hn_acc1 »

ecshafer wrote: post #55
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,…

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.

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.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#73

Post by FlyingBears »

lutherqueen wrote: post #51
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…

How is better communication scary for military? The weapons themselves are

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

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#74

Post by JumpCrisscross »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #60
standardUser wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication being that you know more about this technology than then people building it and funding it.

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…

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

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#75

Post by TeMPOraL »

fsh wrote: post #48
adrianmonk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#76

Post by ashoeafoot »

r14c wrote: post #61
geek_at wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 peacef…

There are no warrior cultures in space.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#77

Post by conception »

stnmtn wrote: post #66
Workaccount2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

They don’t want to get rid of your data caps. They want to get rid of their data bandwidth limitations.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#78

Post by rhubarbtree »

spwa4 wrote: post #67
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…

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.

Cubesats carry laser comms if that's what you mean.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#79

Post by pmcf »

light_triad wrote: post #17

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 simila…

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.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#80

Post by umvi »

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 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.

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