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Hardware

100Mbit Optical Wireless Network 55

Posted by michael from the my-eyes!-the-goggles-do-nothing! dept.
Sven writes: "Victor will be releasing an optical wireless LAN system for indoor use that achieves 100Mbit/s speed. Being an optical system, a line of sight between stations is required. It will be released in Japan on July 27th. The hub costs 148,000 yen (US$1190), one node costs 49,800 yen ($400). Get more details from their website and from Pricewatch Japan. If you don't grok japanese (gasp!), Cafeglobe.com's babelfish is your friend." We have an older story about building-to-building optical networks, but I think this is first inter-office optical LAN I've seen. Seems like this could be a secure way to do wireless LANs without the leakage of 802.11 - as long as you keep your blinds drawn.
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100Mbit Optical Wireless Network More

100Mbit Optical Wireless Network

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  • Why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe I am just being simple but if you have to have line of sight, why not just bite the bullet and install a 100M network (or gig for those prices)?

    Seriously, there are caveats with wireless optical and I cannot think of a really good reason to use this. I can think of some uses but no really good ones.
  • 100Mbit och 11Mbit is more for the performance fixated.
    As the article said this is technology where you don't "leak" all your network trafic.

    Although it seems like a nice thing to have I don't see myself running something like that at home. I don't think it'll catch on for the home consumer where securing the local LAN from leaks isn't imperative.

    // yendor

    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • This can either be off topic entirely or completely relevant depending on which direction you're facing. I've read before about a different sort of radio communication that instead of modulating either frequency or amplitude of a carrier wave the system turns the CW on and off to send data. O | O O O O O | (O being off and | being on) would send an ASCII A for instance. Now I can't find the Popular Science I read about this in and can't seem to remember the name of the scheme to look for it. Anyways, it's basically digital Morse code and has a pretty long fucking reach and attenuates only when the signal washes out in background noise (and even then doesn't have to if you transmit on a Golomb ruled rate). For a second assume I'm not talking out of my ass, wouldn't this be entirely possible with a microcontroller, laser, and a light sensor? Seeing as your baud would be limited by the physical properties of your circuitry namely the speed at which the lighting element in the laser switched from on to off. However I doubt this would be too limited and you could probably get a pretty fair baud rate out of such a system as well as a damn long range. A medium power solid state laser would good range even in less than perfect conditions. A laser link would be a good way to connect wirelessly between buildings as there's little chance of interception and anyone not listening in the correct pattern key wouldn't be able to grab your signal from background noise. Anyone remember the name of the radio pulsing scheme?
  • I'd use this to get 100Mbits between switches or hubs - not for client machines. The device doesn't look like you could carry it around with your PDA.

    This would be better for use in situations where copper isn't an option or convienent - not for true roaming clients. The tethered aspect of the recievers, along with the line-of-sight requirement, limits their use for a 802.11 replacement, IMHO. Beaming 100M to a table in the middle of a 1000 Sqft concrete floored room, with no walls nearby, is a definate use, though.

  • Not speaking Japanese... (Score:5)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Sunday July 01, 2001 @10:53PM (#114987) Journal
    ...I can only go by what Cafeglobe's translation says, but here's the summary:

    It looks like they have a system with a 5 metre (16 ft) range. You mount a "base" unit on the ceiling, and then attach little satellite units to your computers. Communication is line of sight, and utilizes LEDs. The system can apparently find new or relocated nodes in an average of 5 seconds.

    Am I the only one who sees no freaking point? Here's a comparison between this and 802.11b (aka AirPort [apple.com]):

    Range
    802.11b: 45 metres (150 ft)
    Optical: 5 metres (16 ft)
    Winner: 802.11b by a mile (at least, if you get a crazy antenna [slashdot.org]).

    Reliability
    802.11b: Bandwidth drops slightly when somebody uses the office microwave
    Optical: You're booted from your Quake game every time that tall guy with big hair walks by your desk
    Winner: 802.11b, by two frags

    Cost
    802.11b: Base station - $299. Satellite - $99.
    Optical: Base station - $1190. Satellite - $400.
    Winner: 802.11b, by about the cost of a new PC (and some long EtherNet cables).

    Mobility
    802.11b: Still works even if you run with your laptop.
    Optical: Drops the connection every time your annoying office-mate bumps the cubicle wall [dilbert.com].
    Winner: 802.11b can handle any move you make.

    Security
    802.11b: Shitty, unless you live in a Faraday Cage.
    Optical: Shitty, unless you live in a windowless hole.
    Winner: Tie. Use IPSec and/or SSH, and it won't matter if you're using RFC 1149 [landfield.com] or any other wireless network.

    Bandwidth
    802.11b: 11Mbps
    Optical: 100 Mbps
    Winner: Optical, until somebody stands in your line-of-sight.

    Overall Score
    802.11b, 4. Optical, 1.

    In short, forget about optical unless you need 100 Mbps, can't string EtherNet cable, and don't mind if it goes down every time somebody walks by your desk. I'd say it would be good for LAN parties, except it's too expensive. I'd say it's good for trade shows and other temporary large gatherings of computers, except you just know the Microsoft guys would be throwing paper airplanes at the RedHat booth optical transmitter. I have no clue who would actually want this, other than a rich gadget freak.

    If I were going to design my own optical networking gadget, it would be peer-to-peer, with each peer having multiple line-of-sight connections to neighbours. That way, if one is interrupted, packets are instantly rerouted through the other links. Unless a crowd of people is standing around your desk, you're fine. It would probably cost way too much, though. Until that gets cheaper, 100BaseT cables duct-taped to the floor, ceiling, and walls are the way to go for quick, cheap connectivity.

    We have an older story about building-to-building optical networks, but I think this is first inter-office optical LAN I've seen.

    First of all, I think you mean intra-office optical LAN. Second, sometimes, when you get an idea, and nobody else has done it, it means you're a genius. Sometimes, it means you're a moron.
  • ...I think this is first inter-office optical LAN I've seen.

    I've seen this error too many times lately. You mean intra-office, not inter-office. Intra = within, inter = between. Come on, I learned this in my third grade intramural sports league!

  • Lan parties + optical network = bad (Score:3)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Monday July 02, 2001 @01:51AM (#114989)
    That's just insane. There's no way that this technology would be good for a lan party/lanfest. I'm not sure about your lanfests, but none that I've seen have ever been civil. Here's a somewhat basic idea of how things go:

    8PM people start arriving at one of several locations, depending on who is the host (read: parasitic geeks) is for this paticular event. Generally the largest place is picked, if possible, but it's not always possible. Sometimes up to 8 people get crammed into a room the size of a medium bedroom. Card tables and whatever else can be found are set up to place monitors/keyboards on.
    10PM about half the people have connected to the network and have their computers completely hooked up. The other half are running about eating food, talking, and goofing around, pulling antics. Those who have their systems up are assisting those less technically endowed.
    12AM everyone is now connected, and the hubs are going crazy with activity. People are walking about, over wires, past chairs, squeezing through areas just barely big enough for two guys to get through and still keep their dignity. various foods, such as Dorritos, Dew, and pretty much anything else that can be spilled, are being eaten, while the containers are placed inches from their keyboard or mouse, since there is minimal space to be had. one or two people are streaming MP3's from other's computers and playing them, about a third of the people are conversing, while the rest are yelling at each other and joking about as they play various games. The lights are off in the room, so as to minimize monitor glare and heat. The general atmosphere is one of activity - maybe even confusion.
    7AM about half of the attendees start to grow tired and find places on furniture or on the floor where they can sleep. The remaining half stay up and continue to play games.
    9AM those still up decide it's time for breakfast, and head for a local diner
    11AM those that went to the diner return, and the people that fell asleep are just waking up. The 'diner attendees' take the sleepinig positions that were recently vacated, and fall asleep, while the vacating sleepers pack up their systems and leave, possibly grabbing some files over the network quickly before the other computer is disconnected

    I seriously doubt this type of environment would be conductive of optical networking, especially for the price. :) 802.11b would probably work, but it's by far cheaper to use cat5 and a normal hub, which nearly every self respecting geek has ownership of already.

    -------
    Caimlas

  • As the article said this is technology where you don't "leak" all your network trafic.

    Yeah, that's fair, but the hassle factor is still way high. Getting clear LOS from the hub to the node will be nigh-impossible in many buildings, and woe be the tall bastards who wanders through such a network. 8)

    FWIW, you may as well install twisted-pair.

    Still, if the range is any good, it maybe very cool for setting up temporary outdoor nets.

  • And that's about, uh, everyone?

    Well gosh darn, I guess I'm not everyone. My home network consisting of (woo!) 3 boxen, dosen't need 100Mbit. The small online application development company I work for, with a 100Mbit net for 17 workstations and 13 servers, rarely sees utilization above 2-5%.

    So yeah, I guess everyone *needs* 100Mbit. And you're right, almost everyone does *use* 100Mbits, but is that is only because a) 10Mbit equipment is dying out and b) people are influenced by the media and what everyone else is doing, not by what they actually need

    It's kinda like saying everyone is buying 1.xG processors these days becuase they *need* all that processing power to render some HTML, or type up that letter to the grandkids, *not* because that's the slowest you can get. Are you starting to see the difference?

    Some people need processors that fast, and some people need networks that fast, but the vast majority don't. The vast majority may as well save some $$$ and buy some twisted pair, rather spending stupidly large amounts of money on a rather pointless technology. I know that wireless is all the rage, but christ, wireless is cool because it *frees* you from having wires! This laser net is even more fragile and more annoying than a hardwired net.


  • "Developers need to get out of the bad habit of not thinking about authentication. They stop at encryption. Encryption does not equal security. You want to identify both parties and the time. Say I sign my mortgage online, that has to be alive for 30 years."


    Kapoor's recipe for security is, "Authentication, encryption, integrity, non-repudiation. ...If you do them right, you don't have to revisit them..."

    A special tip to handling the biggest threats -- viruses and hacks, in Kapoor's estimation -- is, "If you are moving active content, an executable, make sure it's digitally signed before it can be moved, before the code is executed, so if the code contains a virus you can find out who wrote it. Get responsibility."

    "Developers need to get out of the bad habit of not thinking about authentication. They stop at encryption. Encryption does not equal security. You definitely need authentication which allows the parties to identify each other."
    [Faces of Wireless [ibm.com]]

    How about holding off on who can build the fastest, neon lit, super-hyper-matic-vet-a-meat-a-veggie-matic, technology, and see who can build it correctly. Makes little sense to buy something so new, since 1) It hasn't been proven to be anything more than hype. 2) Assessments are not made to see how stable, secure, functional it is.

    We've all seen so many `new technologies` this past year I don't think anyone could name em all, which shows a) They weren't that memorable b) Apparently the hype died c) somewhere along the line it wasn't the next best thing (now was it)
  • If it's no Scottish.... IT'S CRAP!
  • hypocrite.

  • JVC (Japanese Victor Company) introduced a wireless infrared LAN a few years ago. It was 1mbps and used the ceiling (as long as it was white) to communicate with other nodes in peer-to-peer mode. It also had a "Hub" that was ceiling based.

    This sounds like an improvement of that system.
  • >LOL... The leakage of 802.11... Hey, if you call yourself "Nerd" you can't blame 802.11 for the idiotism of BOFHs neither knowing about the built-in encryption features of 802.11 nor about the possibility to setup IPSec (in eNTe it requires nothing but a mouse-click, on Kinderunix you have to apply some patches...).

    Dear Sir/Madam.

    It comes to my attention that apparently you're insinuating that some BOFHs are idiots, and/or is the possibility that they somehow don't know about encryption. Is this correct ?

    You'll be larted for this. With a very big, heavy and painful lart.

    You don't seem to grasp the concept of being a BOFH. Maybe this [ntk.net] can enlighten you. And don't you DARE to do it again.
  • Shooooosh.. Bandwidth.. Lemme see.. If you're using a 45 meter range radio LAN system. Then you're sharing bandwidth with everyone within 45 meters. Get that ruler out and start measurin'.

    If you're using the 5 meter range optical system, you'll be sharing with everyone within 5 meters. Sure your roof will be full of repeaters/switches, but you'll be enjoying a much better bandwidth than with the 801.11b. The more crowded the office, the better performance gain.

    Oh - if your building isn't ether-wired, you just have to tack on some (expensive) boxes, without having to start tearing the place apart.
  • ...just think how pissed I'll be when I can't take my laptop to the bathroom with me.
    You take your laptop to the bathroom now? Dude, you don't have to spend every second at work actually doing work : )
  • I thought it was Altavista's Babelfish?!?!?
  • According to the web site, it only has a 5 meter range. Additionally, each node is only point-to-point -- they seem to claim some sort of "Burst Idle Optical Protocol" where the nodes would assumedly turn their beams every so often to check other clients, but what a rediculous network that would make.
  • You forgot to add: "Now what was your username again?" <clickety-click>

  • I have been tring to network my block up for some time now. Unfortnally, they won't give me a permit to run fiber across the street. So, this would be a nice way to connect up some of the machines. Of course, I would have to put the unit(s) on the roof. (To avoid cars)

    The only thing stopping me is the price, ouch. Maybe one day it will be reasonable. Are there gonna be Linux drivers :)


    until (succeed) try { again(); }
  • What about companys that have multiable buildings ?
    until (succeed) try { again(); }

  • but... (Score:3)

    by chompz ( 180011 ) on Sunday July 01, 2001 @10:14PM (#115004)
    line of sight restrictions on my TV remote piss me off, just think how pissed I'll be when I can't take my laptop to the bathroom with me.
  • 10. I had to quit smoking, it dropped my throughput by 5%
    9. The mail server is in my office so I can't take naps with the door closed now
    8. Ya know, I heard that at night they hook up the security alarm to a dropped packet detector
    7. Ahhhhhhg, I'm blinded by the bandwidth!
    6. Is this air plenum or non-plenum?
    5. No more naked web surfing
    4. Hey hot stuff, your packets are falling on my crotch, ya wanna go out later?
    3. Every time I sneeze the DHCP server assigns my nose an IP
    2. Cool, I can build a router with a mirror, some gum, and 3 rubber bands.
    1. Hey, would you move, you're blocking my bandwidth!
  • It seems to me that an ongoing problem with laser communication is the weather. Fog, rain, snow, smog, dust/sand storms, etc. cause significant problems in some areas on a frequent basis. If they still have trouble using it to go between buildings, how are you going to get 15 miles?

    Granted, the government has some pretty awsome equipment for astronomy, satellite links and defense projects, but I don't think the FCC will be too keen on licensing that lasers of that power to the general public.

  • 1 Gb/s shouldnt be too troublesome, 622 Mb/s laser connections arent really unusual... and why should they be, under good conditions air is actually a pretty damn good transmission path for the laser. It guarantuees a single mode (the chances of photons getting nocked off the path and then nocked back to the receiver are negligible) and transmission losses are usual not a problem. But once you get a good fog or rain storm you'll need a pretty damn powerfull laser to burn through it over 15 miles :/ You are looking at a couple of 1000's of dB's (!!!) worth of attenuation in worst case.

    Wireless is a poor WAN infrastructure, there just isnt enough bandwith available in the bands which dont suffer much atmospheric loss... which is why satellites always will be a poor substitute for good old fiber.

    Wireless is for LAN and low bandwith.
  • A hundred dB's or so is doable though, so if you can cut it up into ~1 mile segments...
  • Get two fast ethernet to fiber convertor and some fresnel lenses and hack the convertor with the lenses as collimators in front of the laser/pin diode's... then you have a relatively cheap point to point laser connection. That shouldnt be a too difficult to pull of hack.

    You dont need all the dynamic discovery shit which drives the price for the japanese product way way up.

    Hell you might be able to get professional point to point laser solutions cheaper than that...
  • Unless they use something like OFDM the fact that you will have a lot of path's to the receiver of comparable attenuation will present problems at high rates (havent heard of people using that for laser com... but they might). At low rates it doesnt matter.
  • Good starting point: http://www.uwb.org/index.htm
  • Pretty impressive... Im wondering what those beams will do to the wLAN products which will soon occupy the same bands though.
  • Tree's dont grow that fast, and you always spread out the beam a bit (a wider beam has several advantages). If you use a big fresnel lense the only thing you have to worry about is an eagle landing, there's no reason to put any perch worth landing on in front of it anyway.
  • Hmmmm, this could offer up a whole new realm of high-tech office snooping. Imagine what you could do with...

    ...no, not that, so get your finger off that moderating button...

    Imagine what some paranoid PHB could do with a mirror-and-prism setup, intercepting the signals from the optical LAN. I don't trust copper and PHBs in combination; I certainly won't trust light and PHBs. The only good thing is that most PHBs aren't intelligent enough to 1) set this up or 2) read /.

  • This would also be cool for the regular consumer who wants to set up a neighborhood privatenet. I am curious if you could rig the tranciever to be unidirectional instead of omnidirectional so you could set them up on your rooftops and aim them at your friend's down the street or across town (assuming it is line-of-sight, what's the max range on these?).

    The best part of this technology IMHO is that you don't have to lease or license bandwidth from the FCC to use point-to-point, like you do microwave.

  • I can see where te line-of-sight restriction might not be a problem in office enviroments or industrial warehouses where the hubs would be mounted on the ceiling, in a single large enclosed space, but unless your home is some geodesic dome out of the '60s (or something) then I doubt it would work well for the home, besides the standard RF 802.11 stuff is now priced nicely for home use and has range sufficient for most homes. perhaps you'd need two or three base stations at most. Seems to me that the line-oof site limitation of optical wireless will preclude it's adoption for home use. It's not priced right for home use anyway...

    --CTH


    --

  • Priorities (Score:3)

    by qslack ( 239825 ) <`moc.xobop' `ta' `kcalsq'> on Sunday July 01, 2001 @10:20PM (#115017) Homepage Journal
    I really wish that instead of building better wireless LANs, companies would work harder to bring fast Internet access to homes.

    ----------
  • You want a 1Gbps wireless bridge that can run up to 50 miles, LOS? Check this out: http://www.wmux.com/tsunami_gig.html [wmux.com]
  • That's definitely an issue to be concerned about. When 802.11a comes out later this year, it'll run in the 5GHz spectrum too. That could wreak havoc on these P2P links.
  • er, tower feed systems, not tower feet systems... :)
  • I we could get this to work for around 15 miles LOS, then it would make the ideal tower feed system. Our current tower feet systems max out about 50mbps, with the exploding growth in wireless broadband, we could use 100mbps. What we could REALLY use is 1gbps data feeds....

    Donald Beckman
    Wireless internet Broadband Products:
    www.techsplanet.com/wlan [techsplanet.com]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Half the advantage of having a wireless connection is that you can take your machine into the next room or out of the line of sight from the receiver (in radio's case, anyway). However, you couldn't move around too much with an optical receiver because you'd lose line of sight...

  • It actually supports encryption. At lease the Cisco and Lucent solutions we've been evaluation do. They suppot up to 128-bit encryption. Good enough to keep script kiddies out.
  • > Who the hell uses 100Mbits around a LAN anyway? I do - and I wouldn't want to miss it anymore. Far more comfortable, and thats just the two comps I have at home. Think of how much more pleasant the increased bandwidth is in an office network, where 50 workers or more are mailing each other pr0n vids ;-)
  • I use 100Mbps on my home network. 10Mbps doesn't cut it if you're doing any work with video files, for example, or doing big builds over the net. What actually prompted me to upgrade was how long it was taking me to copy my ripped MP3 files to my fileserver, if you must know.

  • Re:Damm, that's expensive (Score:4)

    by GreyPoopon ( 411036 ) <gpoopon@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 02, 2001 @02:02AM (#115027)
    I was going to ask the same question myself, but instead I drank a cup of coffee and waited for the caffeine to take effect. Then, I realized that in addition to the 100Mbps throughput, the REALLY good thing about LOS-based LAN's is: security. If you keep your windows covered, you can pretty much be assured that nobody can use the "bleeding" from your network to sniff your packets.

    The first time I ever set up Wireless LAN, I didn't turn on encryption. I left the thing running in my office, and was about the walk out the door when I realized that I was basically broadcasting sensitive data to whoever might want to listen. I promptly went back to my office and unplugged the thing, vowing to turn the encryption on the next day.

    So, if you want the speed and security without running the wires, I can see where this product would be attractive. The price is a little stiff, but compare it to wire drops plus the cost of what could happen if somebody tapped into your network....

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • I used to sell a similar system for PCs back in the 1980s, but I'm damned if I can recall the product name or mfr. According to their web page (yes I can read japanese) these are infrared optical nets. The one unique property of IR optical nets is that they do NOT require a line of sight. The IR signal can bounce off walls and go right around obstacles. Even if you are completely off of the LOS, you can still get a good signal as long as you have a good bounce.
  • LOL... The leakage of 802.11... Hey, if you call yourself "Nerd" you can't blame 802.11 for the idiotism of BOFHs neither knowing about the built-in encryption features of 802.11 nor about the possibility to setup IPSec (in eNTe it requires nothing but a mouse-click, on Kinderunix you have to apply some patches...).

    And what's about the obvious leakage of this optical thing? "Hey dude, would you go one step beside, please? You interrupt the line of sight beween my workstation and the hub..."

  • Yes, some (most?) BOFHs are idiots. Well... and at least this essay at freshmeat "The Egoless Admin [freshmeat.net]" proves that I'm not alone with this opinion.

    Well, but you are right: Additionally to the typical BOFH - who is far too lazzy to setup encryption - there also is a group clueless baby-admins - who simply don't know that there is something like encryption and that crackers and worms are more than cock-and-bull stories...

  • Of course:

    intersection(set_of_clueless_baby_admins, BOFH) := empty.

    Hmm... Didn't my clumsy English express this? Anyway:

    context := WORLD - IT
    (EXISTS bofh (is_naive(context, bofh) OR is_clueless(context, bofh))) != FALSUM

    ;-)

  • What happens when a tree grows in front of the transmitter or a bird sits in front of it?


    "Press any key to begin."
  • Some people need processors that fast...

    Yes. The manufacturers that want us to buy the chips.
  • I like the idea of having a wireless LAN of any description. However, I hesitate - for much the same reason as my concern over mobile phones - I am not convinced that having a transmitter - even a low powered one, in the case of a radio LAN - beside your work environment is good for the brain. Though an optical one requiring line of sight is probably fine...
  • Is line of sight (for example wireless internet, which is offered here) affected much by bad weather? Anyone know? Given that they're launching it in Ireland, it can't be that bad...
  • I just can't figure this one out. What is the practical application for this 100MB optical hub? In the home it won't work unless it is a one-room home with no walls. In a business environment, where cubicle walls are predominantly used, this would not work, either. I'm more than happy with a wireless solution that passes through walls -- so I don't have to drill holes in my walls and ceilings. 100Mbps? I don't need it. Hell... I'm more than happy with 10Mbps. It seems to me that this technology is a step forward (technology wise), but a HUGE step-backwards in practical application.
  • I know this is a bit off the Optical LAN thread, but there was some discussion below per Optical WAN. Thought I would throw in my personal experience I had with Optical WAN companies... Some comments below in this thread concerning the Optical WAN companies... After busting our ass with several Optical WAN companies, bar none, Terabeam has the best product and their service people are nothing short of fantastic. Any thoughts about a bird flying in the way, is a null issue with TB, their beam is spread quite wide and you can easily put in a redundant connection in another window. If if the link is is briefly interupted by a 747 flying between buildings, they are Optical, Ethernet, TCP/IP, so it immediately recovers. Also they have some kick-ass hologram technology that is extremely cool. Although I can't state our large corporate name for legal reasons(right now), I can say that if you are in metro area(Seattle and Denver today) and Terabeam comes to town, order up their service, it's VERY fast, installed in VERY short order (a week) and carrier grade quality even in crappy weather conditions (we are in Seattle where the worst weather is and haven't had a hick up). Company is at: www.terabeam.com Feel free to send personal comments to: sssmja@hotmail1.com (remove the 1 from hotmail.com - inserted for spam reasons)

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