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Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoIt’ll go down at the first sign of rain. We’ve been there with microwave internet.
- panarky 2y agoThat'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 2y agoThe implication being that you know more about this technology than then people building it and funding it.
- pixl97 2y agoBeing that I've not seen an actual technology relase from this company so far it's up to them to quell the doubts.
- delulu42 2y ago[dead]
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoAt 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 2y agoRain 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_fade
- geokon 2y agoDid I misunderstand or are the solutions: A) Up the power and blast through B) Use a different suboptimal frequency with much lower bandwidth Neither seem like actual solutions...
- walrus01 2y agoBy 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?
- DecentShoes 2y agoThat happens all the time. A random person on the internet predicted the iPhone 4 antennagate problem before it got released. Everyone on the planet who plays videogames knew the Xbox One announcement was suicide and we were right. Plus there's the possibility they're well aware of this problem but are going full steam ahead anyway.
- __turbobrew__ 2y agoI 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 2y agoFog 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_communication#Extending_the_useful_distance 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 2y agoThe 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 2y agoI haven't heard of microwave internet. Any recommended readings?
- Workaccount2 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission
- bilalel 2y agoThey 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.
- simoncion 2y agoMy Monkeybrains connection stays up (albeit with low-to-moderate packet loss) in the heaviest rain San Francisco has to offer. Granted, that's what folks would call light-to-moderate rain... but that's a LOT more rain than suggested by "the first sign of rain".
- dhbradshaw 2y agoGreat for space
- cma 2y agoWait, "Google X" is now just known as "X"? So there is a separate "X" from Alphabet and "X" from tweet all day guy?
- pityJuke 2y agoSince 2016 [0] [0]: https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/18/technology/google-x-new-logo/ https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/18/technology/google-x-new-log...
- RajT88 2y agoWhat this means is that in the next 5 years Microsoft will name 3 different things X.
- darth_aardvark 2y agoThey only need 1 more to hit that, since they got 2 in the Xbox Series X.
- psunavy03 2y ago. . . and put them in a box.
- andrewl-hn 2y agoThe most peculiar detail: at the bottom of https://x.company https://x.company website in the socials column they literally have a link "X (not us)" to https://www.twitter.com/theteamatx https://www.twitter.com/theteamatx
- srameshc 2y agoI thought this was a link to X(twitter) but this is a Google X
- black_puppydog 2y agoBig tech deserves to burn for their evolution in naming alone.
- bix6 2y agoBmw would like a word: BMW M760Li xDrive V12 Final Edition
- mdaniel 2y agoAnd also squatting on the i3 name because one of these is not like the other https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bmw+i3+2020&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bmw+i3+2020&iax=images&ia=images vs https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bmw+i3+edrive+35l&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bmw+i3+edrive+35l&iax=images&ia=im... I mean, seriously, there are more numbers available
- rcpt 2y agoIs that a gaming monitor?
- elromulous 2y agoFwiw, Google X predates the Twitter -> X rename by more than a decade.
- xnx 2y agoThe second episode of the Google Moonshot podcast covers this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaYGw5_PE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaYGw5_PE0
- almosthere 2y agoUnfortunately anyone out of Google is not ambitious enough. They can't execute. Tiny steps don't accomplish anything.
- delulu42 2y ago[dead]
- thebytefairy 2y ago.. tiny steps don't accomplish anything? Do you think tech innovations spring out of nowhere? What do you think about Waymo?
- dmix 2y agoSlow R&D is fine for innovation for sure, Waymo mostly completed the R&D part, similar to the stage I presume Taara is at. The difficult part is then scaling it up into a large self-sustaining business. The hard economics realities tend to come about quickly after that and competition starts nipping at your heels. Google itself replaced many of the early big name search pioneers like Altavista.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoRONJA[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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA
- proxysna 2y agoExactly my first thought. Had this link in my bookmarks for an eternity. http://images.twibright.com/tns/1208.html http://images.twibright.com/tns/1208.html
- looofooo0 2y agoThere 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 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01201-7 Single digit amount of photons is needed per bit.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoIntersting... my physics class in high school (late 80s) made an RF modulated laser transmission system for sending analog video between two buildings a few miles apart. It worked great. I didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time since we had already done microwave and other frequencies.
- xiphias2 2y agoThere'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 2y agostarlink is a competitor of T_Mobile, not Taara. Taara is just a supplier for T-Mobile (example).
- fsh 2y agoThis 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 2y agoOptical 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.
- idkwhatever 2y ago[dead]
- culi 2y agoThat'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 2y agoThe 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.
- culi 2y agoWhat are you labelling inferior here? Both Taara and Starlink? Yes, both of those are inferior to wired infrastructure but they clearly have their usecases. If you were to start a mining project that lasts a few months or even a few years but is expected to eventually be finished and packed up, Taara seems like exactly what you need. It can also outcompete Starlink because it won't require us to constantly replace decaying satellites. Also means less space debris pollution which is increasingly becoming a huge concern
- light_triad 2y agoApparently 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-internet-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-org/ https://www.wired.com/2016/01/facebook-zuckerberg-internet-o...
- pmcf 2y agoLine 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 2y agoI like your first sentence as a truism.
- kfrzcode 2y agoIt does have a lot of potential. "At once, the planets stood between us, forever occluding what we yearn to see. For existence itself could not repent, the time we spent, and yet Only whence wielding wattage whole had we defined; -- an oculus toward which we'd partake of thine. To space and time, no morphisms apply, no longer shall ye escape our Eye."
- walrus01 2y ago$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 2y ago> 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.
- delulu42 2y ago[dead]
- thesuitonym 2y ago> 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 2y agoPeople 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 2y agoYou 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 2y ago
- seanp2k2 2y agoWhen 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 2y agoIn 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 2y agoI 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.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoI'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-naval-communications/ https://defence-blog.com/us-navy-plans-to-revolutionize-nava...
- m463 2y agoWait until military people put the receiver on their chest. Then all the military dramas will flip from "sniper acquired target" to "communication with friendlies reestablished"
- HPsquared 2y agoSounds like a nice way to do IFF. Optical transponder. Only responds on a valid challenge received.
- fc417fc802 2y ago> Only responds on a valid challenge received. Perhaps I misunderstand but that sounds like a scary failure mode.
- whatever1 2y agoBut smoke/cloud kills them.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoNot necessarily. Depends on the wavelength.
- lutherqueen 2y agoHow is better communication scary for military? The weapons themselves are
- fweimer 2y agoWhat'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.
- numbers 2y agooh... X.company is not X fka Twitter
- DoctorOW 2y agoIn the footer of the website they link to their profile: "X (not us)"
- kazinator 2y agoIs line of sight light spectrum subject to any permissions/licensing like radio/microwave? If not, that is significant.
- gonzo 2y agohow do you license ... light?
- kazinator 2y agoHow 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 another.
- fc417fc802 2y agoI wouldn't put it past the FCC to require a license for your car headlights if you hook a transceiver up to them.
- bloggie 2y agoIt is not, like the THz band, which is why it’s very interesting for telecommunications. There is more bandwidth available in a tinier part of the spectrum. It’s like comparing the ipv4 address space to the ipv6 address space. And no license required.
- oh_my_goodness 2y agoThe internet is already over lasers, but I guess this is a free space thing.
- borlox 2y ago[flagged]
- grahamgooch 2y agoThis is great. My WiFi is provided by a microwave link - it’s good but expensive.
- phendrenad2 2y agoThe goggles, they do nothing!
- yonran 2y agoIs this optical phased array beam steering hardware supposed to be affordable for ISPs such as Monkeybrains to use for end users, or is this just for backhaul connections?
- leoh 2y agoDoes anyone else find it sus that the VC firm is called Series X Capital? Sounds kinda Google X related.
- mmaunder 2y agoThis doesn't work in fog. Space lasers are great. No fog. Everyone wants the 500 Terahertz frequencies to work because bandwidth. They have about 25,000 times the carrying capacity of say 20 Ghz. The lower Ghz stuff penetrates weather to varying degrees. Visible light not so much unless it's a vacuum which is perfect. They should move their nodes into space. Oh wait someone already did that.
- Narew 2y agoIt's not only fog. Depending on pupil size it can also be rain. But during my thesis 10y ago one of the big limitation on horizontal line of sight laser telecommunication was scintillation due to turbulence. And this phenomenon appear in clear weather condition with heat. So it was limited in clear and sunny weather. I don't know what up time did there expect ? But the bandwidth should fluctuate a lot.
- mmaunder 2y agoThanks
- boguscoder 2y agoIronically Xerox Parc experimented with network over laser more than 5 decades ago
- ffiirree 2y agoDamn I need to look into whatever else they were testing
- throwaway346434 2y agoWait. Is this why twitter got rebranded; a billionaires pissing match and brand confusion?
- noworld 2y agoAh, the sci-fi tight beam.
- froh 2y agoI certainly am missing the point --- targeting internet with electromagnetic waves isn't exactly new technology? https://www.dfmg.de/en/our-benefits/radio-relay-links.html https://www.dfmg.de/en/our-benefits/radio-relay-links.html https://www.dfmg.de/de/unsere-leistungen/richtfunkanbindungen.html https://www.dfmg.de/de/unsere-leistungen/richtfunkanbindunge... so now instead of electromagnetic waves it's light? what am I missing?
- boxed 2y agoDifferent frequencies I gathered? Lasers are more like lines than radio that is more like waves on a pond.
- thehappypm 2y agoLasers need line of sight.
- pzo 2y ago> overcoming the stubborn connectivity gaps that prevent nearly 3 billion people from accessing the internet. I doubt it's really that big number. There will always be a gab because... toddlers and kids <5 years old don't use internet.
- anshorei 2y ago> toddlers and kids <5 years old don't use internet that's wishful thinking
- stevetron 2y agoThis looks like the infrared laser system that I worked on at a startup from 1980-1992. That system would create a full-duplex link running at either E1 or T1 speeds, with a distance limit of about 1 mile. I remember there were about a dozen systme shipped worldwide. There was one in canada. Another was sold to Alameda County, Calif. Another made a 2-path jump between some high-rises in New York City. Still another was in Malasia, used by a bank. There was also one that was located to straddle the Texas-Mexico border for a Chtsler factory to allow communications between the two factories and it wasn't 'legal' to string a cable between the buildings wuith the border being between. That one was frequently getting sent back to me for 'repair', the biggest issue being vandalism of the attached rifle scopes on the Mexico side. Which then required new rifle scopes, and a re-calibration on our field in Golden, Colo. Our company was named Telecommunication Products Inc., which was bought out by a company that was deeply involved in leasing TV-service to hotels. That's when the laser really died.
- stevetron 2y agoSome typos(sorry): "Canada", "Chrysler".