That’s definitely fast enough for the vast majority of applications, and many servers on the internet would struggle to supply such high data rates, but the accursed laws of physics get in the way.
Long story short, the 10 GE gear that I’ve tried uses a goodly amount of power and runs very hot, or is big, or both. A big network brick attached to your laptop defeats the purpose of portable devices.
Then there’s the issue of poking the stiff network cables which can be curved (a little) but not bent, through walls and in between floors.
Both electricians I asked about doing the wiring for me stopped responding to calls and emails, after quoting painfully high prices for the job in the hope that I’d take the hint.
A wired fibre-optic network for the home office would definitely provide SuperGeek street cred and be hyperfast, but it does add even more complexity because the tech isn’t really designed to reach end-user devices.
Wireless networking is where it’s at, but even the fastest Wi-Fi isn’t quick enough yet.
As an interesting aside, when you talk about Wi-Fi the 802.11 refers to 802 IEEE local and metropolitan area networking committee, and the 11 signifies wireless.
Okay, fine, it’s not interesting then, but here’s the thing: for radio frequencies, we’re up to 802.11ax, which is not marketing friendly so it’s called Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6 E.
My home office Netgear Wi-Fi provides throughput of over 1 Gbps using newer laptops like recent MacBook Pros, and that’s in a wireless mesh network setup. There can never be fast enough Wi-Fi though, and we do seem to be nearing a performance ceiling for wireless networking.
There’s another high-frequency radio wave technology for Wi-Fi which is WiGig and which has been in the works for some years now. That is 802.11ay, and runs in the 60 GHz frequency range, so the signal doesn’t go through walls and floors like existing Wi-Fi. Smells like dead-end tech that’s too difficult to set up then.
Which brings us to Li-Fi. That’s a catchy name that people will remember, and it’s wireless too. Instead of sending data through radio frequencies, you do so through light-emitting diodes.
Li-Fi uses 802.11 networking protocols, and this month the 802.11bb standard for light-based networking came out. It uses light in the 800 to 1000 nanometre band, which is near-infrared and gets you data rates up to 9.6 Gbps.
Which is fast, but in 2015 researchers at Oxford and University College London squeezed 224 Gbps out of a LED-light connection. Okay, it was only over three metres and with a fairly narrow field of vision angle, but that kind of speed would make many internet providers jealous until they saw the short range.
Dr Harald Haas is the “Father of Li-Fi” and already in 2011 he said that all we need to do is to fit a small microchip to “every potential illumination device” and Bob’s your uncle, it’s no longer dark and we have really fast wireless data. All of us want to believe in Haas’ tidy and cable-free vision.
What’s more, a Li-Fi network would be reasonably secure as well, since light doesn’t go through walls and objects, although pulling the curtains and blinds might be best operational security practice.
Unfortunately, it may be that Haas doomed the widespread adaptation of the technology by presenting it at a TED Talk, because Li-Fi just hasn’t taken off.
Sure, there is Li-Fi in space now, launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, aboard the Inspire-Sat 7 scientific nano satellite. This can do Li-Fi data connections at 2 Gbps over 1 kilometre; that’s the suggestion at least.
However, for our hyperfast home offices, there’s not a whole lot of Li-Fi gear out there. You could pay thousands, and get a desk lamp that gives you 23 Mbps, or a whole system for about three grand, which doesn’t go faster than 150/140 Mbps as it uses Visible Light Communication.
Ah well. One day Li-Fi will be ready, with data pullulating from energy-saving LED lights. I’m sure that the kinks will be ironed out.
Meanwhile, if any network cabling people are reading this column, my contact email is on the top of the page.
