Light bulb WLAN hits 800Mbps

Who would have thought that one day, the average, ordinary light bulb could actually be used to transmit data instead of just lighting up the entire room? Yes, that’s right, as German scientists over at the Heinrich Hertz Institute managed to take light bulb networking technology to a totally different level.

White LEDs managed to hit a top speed of 500Mbps earlier this year, but over the past half year or so, researchers have not just sat idly in front of their computers doing nothing but munching on doughnuts and drinking coffee, basking in their past successes. No sir, they instead managed to cobble together what seems to be a rag-tag combination of white, green, blue, and red, ramping its speed up all the way to 800Mbps to make wired Ethernet connections quake in its boots.

This is a line of sight networking technology, so it will not oust the standard Cat 5 line or Wi-Fi router, although it might be suitable to be in action at places where radio-based wireless technology could wreak havoc on sensitive equipment, such as at hospitals.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: wireless