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Comment by transpute | Hacker News Reader

https://www.rtinsights.com/li-fi-a-new-wireless-alternative-...

> Li-Fi connections are broadcast over the air through a light-emitting diodes (LED) broadcaster and support rates up to 100Gbit/s ... Li-Fi can also serve to identify an object’s indoor position more accurately than Wi-Fi or GPS used today (less than 2cm and less than 3 degrees of orientation while it is providing real-time localization (less than 34ms). This accuracy is vital in multiple applications such as navigation In-Door Robots and Drones, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Gaming, among others ... it cannot go through walls, and thus a private local area network (LAN) can be created by lighting up a closed room ... Any organization that needs to keep information within the four walls, such as military bases and banks, can use the technology to keep data restricted to a single room.

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There's potential for visible-light networking but the Li-Fi people in particular are complete garbage. They claim visible light travels faster than radio waves and say Li-Fi is a hundred times faster than wi-fi but their thousand dollar router can only do 100Mb/s. They also rip off the Wi-Fi Alliance logo.

That's disappointing, sounds like they need competition.

Oh, I have been dreaming about LiFi for some time, if what you're saying it's true, that's... disappointing. Do you have any sources about the current state of (real-world) LiFi ?

Literally their website.

Who specifically is "their"?

https://lifi.co/lifi-vs-wifi/

It does not address the issues outlined by parent at all

Which Li-fi people? AFAICT there are several groups, and li-fi.co (which I'll assume you're talking about) is less advertising for one specific group, and more advocating for the technology as a whole.

> They claim visible light travels faster than radio waves

I wasn't able to find it on the lifi website but seems like some poor copywriter got something wrong

> their thousand dollar router can only do 100Mb/s

Who's they? In any case, since lifi.co is advocating Li-Fi as a whole so it makes sense they talk about theoretical speeds, whereas a specific router from some manufacturer might not be able to reach those speeds, considering how new the technology is

In the end, I imagine Li-Fi doesn't have much of a future outside of niche markets because it has to compete with wifi which is everywhere (and it can't supplant wifi because e.g. it doesn't work in your pocket)

https://lifi.co/lifi-vs-wifi/

Another big advantage of LiFi is that the usage of light allows LiFi connections to occur almost instantaneously because light travels at extremely fast speeds. This results in faster transmission of data and faster internet connections – about 100 times faster than speeds achievable by WiFi.

https://lifi.co/lifi-products/lifimax/

$1098 Guaranteed fast data transfer with 100 Mbps download & 100 Mbps upload.

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