this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Would Starlink and other satellite ISP's be able to mitigate some of the traffic?

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I suppose:

1a. that'd be a lot of cables to take out

2b. many cables are terrestrial

3c. Putin would tick off other BRICS members and other countries

4d. ship-to-ship—maybe get some airplanes and balloons involved

5e. American Navy attacks Russian vessels cutting cables, and Biden tells Putin to stop this folly

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

That is a curious enumeration strategy

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The US has been able to send bandwidth via laser beam long distances for a while. I wonder if they could set up a network this way to bypass any bad cables. Even if only while they are being repaired.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Not across oceans though. Earth is curved.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Even without curvature, there's way too much atmospheric interference for that. Laser communication works well in space where there is literally nothing in the way, including ajr. Even point to point microwaves only kind of work on earth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Some short waves seem to be good a penetrating clouds, so some transmission is possible.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Sure sure, next you'll say birds are real!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Come off it, nobody’s saying that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I know, what if we put lasers on the birds!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not just curved, but curved quite substantially, despite what your eyes may tell you. At eye level on a flat plain you can only see about 3 miles due to the curvature. The closest points across the Atlantic are 1,770 miles apart.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

At 10 meters, line-of-sight is over 10 km.

From a jet traveling at 1 km, line-of-sight is over 100 km.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We’ll just curve the lasers then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I'll get my wrench then

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Not across oceans though. Earth is curved.

/c/flatearthers

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Lasers work really well in space for secure sat-to-sat data links, but are a lot less viable on Earth's surface due to diffraction and weather, nevermind the limits of the visible horizon for any height of a communications tower. For pretty much any scenario where laser comms would be considered, microwave RF links would likely be just as good, cheaper, and more commonly deployed and understood by telecom engineers. The only exception is when absurdly high bandwidths are needed, which is where lasers rule.

But using RF links across thousands of kilometers of oceanic waters? For that, you must construct additional pylons on floating islands to repeat the signal. Otherwise, the only RF signals that could reach land would be too low frequency to carry much bandwidth.

For reference, when the German Aerospace Center (DLR) set the world record in 2016 for free-space optical communications, they achieved 1.72 Tbits/sec over a distance of 10.45 km. Most optical systems observe a bandwidth/distance relationship, where at best, shooting the signal farther means less available bandwidth, or more bandwidth if brought closer. This is a related to the Shannon-Hartley theorem, since the limiting factor is optical noise.

So if 1.72 Tbits/sec at 10 km is the best they achieved in free air in 2016, then that pales in comparison to the undersea fibre cables of 2006, where a section of the SHEFA-2 Scottish-Faroese cable runs unamplified for 390 km and moves 570 Gbits/sec aggregate.

In short, free-space lasers are fast and long-distance. But lasers within fibre cables are much faster and cover even longer distances. They're not even in the same league.