The secret world of microwave networks
arstechnica.co.uk
arstechnica.co.uk
[1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba...
How would that work when the dishes need to be pointed at each other and the barge will be bobbing back and forth?
Does the signal spread enough to cope with that?
Gain, even though this isn't a correct analogy, is like the difference between a laser and a flash light. The laser is a very narrow beam, which is a high gain antenna, and the flash light is very low gain.
What I'd be worried about are waves and storms knocking out the network. I would assume that microwaves would go through a wave since they are so nigh energy but they are used by the navy for wave-detection (radar is basically microwave). Moving around isn't too bad because they only need to be on at about 50-60deg. Heavy waves would knock out the network like you are worried as well since I think microwaves would be able to punch through the ionosphere most of the time (UHF is usually used for sat-coms by the military).
The bigger problem is you'd need at least 70 of them to cross the atlantic.
That actually doesn't sound too bad. I would've expected that number to be much higher.
I wonder how that cost would compare to the thousands of miles of cabling we currently use.
> The first reason is somewhat obvious; if you have your own network connection, it's usually easier to guarantee things like security, quality of service, bandwidth, and other factors that businesses value highly. The second reason, as we've already alluded to, is that microwave networks—somewhat surprisingly—can have lower latency than fibre. With some advanced networks, that latency is only a few microseconds slower than the speed of light. Fibre can be pretty quick over short stretches, but it soon starts lagging over longer distances, such as between two stock exchanges or a multinational's offices.
The 1st reason is really off the mark. We know how to securely transmit data over insecure networks, and quality of service and bandwidth can be better handled by service contracts with the network provider. He states "other factors that businesses value highly" which is vague but could possibly be interpreted to include competitive advantages - yet cannot in light of the fact that the 2nd point addresses competitive advantages. By owning the fastest microwave network, you can execute faster than your competitors and directly use that for monetary advantage. So his 1st reason is completely waste of space.
Adding another layer does not stymie anything - it might add latency but this will be exploited by those with the most resources resulting in [additional] advantages (e.g. on top of the microwave network advantage, a race to write to the blockchain).
With recent work in millimeter wave radios I am sure you could get the capacity of this network much higher than it is now, although rain fading might be a problem.
Total capacity isn't the key, here. It's latency. And you're really exaggerating the impact air has on the speed of radio propagation. When you take into account the physical latency of the distance to satellites in geo stationary orbit, it's easy to see that a microwave network can be faster. If you're using non-geostationary satellites for communication, you have to negotiate the infrastructure changing out from under you constantly. Reliability is key for these networks. Waiting milliseconds for your physical layer to switch to a new satellite means you lose. QoS also adds significant latency. It's not a viable choice for extremely low-latency networks.
As an aside, you'll probably get a more positive response around here if you endeavour to keep your comments from getting so emotionally laden ... saying bullshit multiple times doesn't do anything to strengthen your argument.
Satellite internet has high latency not because "pushing through air" but because geostationary satellites are very far.
Nobody is disputing the fact that fibre optic can handle much higher bandwidths, but that is irrelevant in this application. The amount of data required to make a trade is probably in the order of kiloBytes or MegaBytes, easily handled by the few Gbps limit of microwave links.
The reason why satellite internet is so terrible is because a geostationary satellite sits 22,236 miles above the surface of the earth. So for a roundtrip journey, a packet of data has to travel nearly 45,000 miles.