Look out world ... here comes Li-fi! (100 times faster than wifi)

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

That same law is still working for wifi. When do you think wired gigabit eithernet is becoming mainstream? It is been available for quite a while, why isn't everybody using it at home already for every wired connection?

It is not a "640k should be enough", but a "this is way too expensive to upgrade".

Short of the router I don't have any wired connections, everything is wireless. I'd have thought this is more why wired gigabit connections aren't in use in many homes, unless you are using multiple PC's and a server you just don't need the bandwidth.

[Cinisajoy]

Dish is wired and so is a laptop. Hubby prefers wired to wireless.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Short of the router I don't have any wired connections, everything is wireless. I'd have thought this is more why wired gigabit connections aren't in use in many homes, unless you are using multiple PC's and a server you just don't need the bandwidth.

Just having multiple PCs is sufficient reason if you regularly need to copy large files between them. With 100Mbit Ethernet file transfer speed is limited by network speed; with 1Gbps Ethernet transfer speeds are limited by drive speed. I've used it for many years for that reason.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ApK

Isn't everyone? I am. Don't most recent pcs and routers have gb?
I pulled out a spare router with 100baseT the other day and it seemed ancient.

In my house the main router is still a Linksys WRT54G. All the desktop computers (there's eight in my family) are hooked up via Asoka Pluglink powerline adapters (total of five of them) except for my wife's and my room, where the powerlink goes into another Linksys WRT54G set up as a wireless AP. (It runs my desktop and the Chromecast and whatever phone/tablet/laptop that's in this area of the house.) Upstairs (in addition to the switches that distribute the powerlinks to more than one computer) I've got a Linksys WAP54G for anything that needs wireless connections upstairs. I used to have several Asus wireless router/APs but I get better reliability and higher speeds with the powerline adapters and the wired switches. And I really don't give a rat's pajamas if they're not 1GB connections. Our Internet speed is 60 Mbps (a little more, actually) and the powerline adapters range from 15-25 Mbps (mine, the slowest) to up to 45-50 Mbps directly upstairs. It works pretty well. I don't move huge files (no reason to).

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Just having multiple PCs is sufficient reason if you regularly need to copy large files between them.

I can wait a couple minutes when (rarely) I transfer a fairly large file via thumb drive. My first hard drive was 40 MBs and "only" cost me $250.

[ApK]

rcentos, were you under the impression that Harry or I were trying sell you network equipment?

P.s.I still use a wrt54g, too! It's on my dsl line as a separate backup service , for less risk of an outage when I work from home.

[HarryT]

Note that, even if your router only supports 100Mbps Ethernet, it's not necessary to replace it to get 1Gbps networking between your PCs. Just get an Ethernet switch box which supports both 1G and 100M (which almost all do), plug all your PCs into the switch, and then connect the switch to the router. Traffic between your PCs will now flow at 1G, while external traffic between the router and the switch will be 100M.

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Have you considered the physics of it? 400GHz is approaching the frequency range of the far infrared, rather than radio waves, which means that such signals would be blocked by any solid object. It would be terrible for WiFi. The higher the frequency, the less able the signal is to go through obstacles.

Do you mean the physics of 400-gigabit Wi-Fi? If so, then you're making at least two invalid assumptions:

• That bit rate and MHz have a 1:1 relationship.
• That Wi-Fi purely uses omnidirectional signals.

Currently, a 160MHz 802.11ac channel provides 866.7Mbps, or about 5.4 bps per Hz of bandwidth. So far, the record is about 14 bps per Hz, as seen in modems, with ADSL being only slightly behind that at ~13.5 bps per Hz.

Assuming that future Wi-Fi tech can achieve similar levels, 400-gigabit Wi-Fi would require only about a 29 GHz channel width, which is nuts, but a lot less nuts.

Additionally, with sufficiently advanced beamforming, there's every possibility that a future Wi-Fi standard might send multiple parallel channels through the air. If you could manage to get ten independent channels through the air by putting antennas a few feet apart on the base station end of the connection, then each channel would need to be only 3 Ghz wide, which is only about twice the bandwidth currently used by 802.11ac when running at full speed.

So the physics are pretty insane, but not hopelessly out of the range of possibility.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Just having multiple PCs is sufficient reason if you regularly need to copy large files between them. With 100Mbit Ethernet file transfer speed is limited by network speed; with 1Gbps Ethernet transfer speeds are limited by drive speed. I've used it for many years for that reason.

But you have to be a fairly specialised type of home user to need to transfer multi GB files on a regular basis. Most people watch a bit of streaming video, skype & use social media. In your average house virtually all communication is between your device and the outside world, very little data will transfer from device to device internally, even 4k video streaming only needs about 15 Mbps.

The bottleneck on most people's bandwidth is their internet connection not wi-fi speed.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

But you have to be a fairly specialised type of home user to need to transfer multi GB files on a regular basis.

True, which is why I added the caveat .

Most people watch a bit of streaming video, skype & use social media. In your average house virtually all communication is between your device and the outside world, very little data will transfer from device to device internally, even 4k video streaming only needs about 15 Mbps.

In my case it's mainly copying RAW-format DLSR photographs around. A day's photography can easily result in 50GB of files.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

True, which is why I added the caveat .

In my case it's mainly copying RAW-format DLSR photographs around. A day's photography can easily result in 50GB of files.

For me it's usually DVD and VM images moving to and from my NAS,
while my family is simultaneously streaming multiple channels of HD video and gaming and browsing, etc etc.

Limiting speed for me is the NAS performance if i use a Gb wired connection, wifi speed otherwise. And I wouldn't mind a faster NAS.

[harriska2]

We record TV shows on a mac mini using eye tv and sometimes transfer them upstairs to watch. Not huge file sizes but it can take a bit of time. I was also transferring home movies back and forth for processing and that took *hours*.