Alphabet Spins Off Laser-Based Internet Project Taara From 'Moonshot' Unit (ft.com) 22
Alphabet is spinning out Taara, a laser-based internet company from its X "moonshot" incubator, securing backing from Series X Capital while retaining a minority stake.
Taara's technology transmits data at 20 gigabits per second over 20km by firing pencil-width light beams between traffic light-sized terminals, extending traditional fiber-optic networks with minimal construction costs.
Based in Sunnyvale, California, the company operates in 12 countries, including India and parts of Africa, where it created a 5km laser link over the Congo River between Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The two-dozen-strong team partners with telecommunications firms like Bharti Airtel and T-Mobile to extend core fiber-optic networks to remote locations or dense urban areas.
Taara originated from Project Loon, which was shut down in 2021 after facing regulatory challenges. The company is developing silicon photonic chips to replace mirrors and lenses in its terminals and potentially enable multiple connections from a single transmitter.
Taara's technology transmits data at 20 gigabits per second over 20km by firing pencil-width light beams between traffic light-sized terminals, extending traditional fiber-optic networks with minimal construction costs.
Based in Sunnyvale, California, the company operates in 12 countries, including India and parts of Africa, where it created a 5km laser link over the Congo River between Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The two-dozen-strong team partners with telecommunications firms like Bharti Airtel and T-Mobile to extend core fiber-optic networks to remote locations or dense urban areas.
Taara originated from Project Loon, which was shut down in 2021 after facing regulatory challenges. The company is developing silicon photonic chips to replace mirrors and lenses in its terminals and potentially enable multiple connections from a single transmitter.
How do you prevent occlusion? (Score:2)
What happens if some object interrupts the beam? Do they have redundant beams, or some sort of error correction protocol?
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Enable the "burn through it setting". :D
Re:How do you prevent occlusion? (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I work there
The beam is not dangerous and small interruptions are handled by error correction in the device itself and higher level protocols (like resending tcp packets).
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How do you handle fog or heavy rain or snow? Those don't seem like things that an error correction protocol could handle, and "re-sending the packet" might take hours.
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Error correction could certainly handle it, but you're right, it's going to have to handle it via retransmission. The hardware could do that independent of the host, but it's still a plan which requires a backup link. On the other hand, this might be a cost-effective way to get more bandwidth than you've got with your existing link whenever the sun is shining. It might make sense when the alternative is a metered connection.
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Have you guys tried marketing these to companies working on satellite constellations ?
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Huh, that's interesting. How does the link hold up versus something like microwave?
Re:How do you prevent occlusion? (Score:5, Funny)
The beam is not dangerous and small interruptions are handled by error correction in the device itself and higher level protocols (like resending tcp packets).
You're never gonna make it as a Bond Villain with that kind of attitude, mister!
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Just read the Warning Label: Do not look a LASER with remaining eye.
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You could mitigate this by doing the transfer in multiple wavelengths of light. This way if one wavelength is blocked, the others can be used for error correction, or to replace the "lost" information. ECC is pretty quick and there are more complex options if you need to get higher levels of recovery more often.
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You mean it's not like this [youtube.com]? Bummer.
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This company mission I am really interested in, and know loads about. I will be applying to your company's careers page !
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Error correction or at least resend is obviously there .. it's in most protocols all the way up to the app layer. Most things that interrupt the beam would be for sub-second .. you'd see it as a slightly glitch in a video call. How would it happen depends on how many birds live around there. Object interruption likely isn't an issue, fog and rain .. that may be a challenge. Which is why I think their tech is batter suited for satellite to satellite comms. They should try to sell their photonic chips or lice
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Re: One might overcome fog or rain (Score:3)
Nope.
Those are just two of the reasons megawatt military lasers have proven useless, even when supplied with unlimited reserve power in controlled tests.
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At the application layer, what they will do is disconnect and attempt reconnect, and attempt to resume the session (if they're that advanced), or start over (if they're not)
UDP being connectionless sometimes has TCP-isms built into the application layer, but most of the time not- they just carry on without the lost/corrupted data.
Ultimately, TCP is designed to operate with packet loss (indeed,
Ghost Busters (Score:3)
Whatever you do, Don't cross the streams.
What happened to ... (Score:2)