4 ms·

One place where it would work well is offices. Office buildings have drop ceilings that make it easier to mount devices on the ceiling. Then have one Lifi in ea

One place where it would work well is offices. Office buildings have drop ceilings that make it easier to mount devices on the ceiling. Then have one Lifi in each office or pretty dense in open plan offices. This could solve the problem of getting reliable speeds to devices without Ethernet, that are either hard to wire or don't want to plug in.

cornholio 3y ago
The speeds would be completely reliable until somebody starts walking around the office, disrupting the line of sight to the lightspot in the ceiling.
- xoa 3y ago
  Like, sure it'd vary by office, but a lot of us are in spaces with pretty high ceilings and even a very tall person wouldn't be able to disrupt the view of most lights. I think the assumption here is LiFi, or other highly directional tight beam possibilities, would require significantly more density of WAPs. Maybe not every light replaced but a solid grid in most spaces, and then clients would be regularly connected to different ones and rapidly jumped between them as needed due to movement/obstruction (conceptually the same as Starlink for example which constantly connects, tracks, and rapidly jumps between sats which are LEO and thus constantly moving over the horizon). Part of the implementation standard would be handling all the packet shuffling for that, which will have to be enormously better then WiFi Roaming. Higher density is more costly too of course, but even so depending on the performance that might well still be cheaper/easier then fiber drops everywhere, plus it'd avoid some of the minor but sticky end user physical interface issues of fiber connections. Whether the value is there remains to be seen and will no doubt vary, but as others have said a lot of typical office plans (with drop ceilings, ceiling rails or other designs meant to enable more modular ceiling use) on the surface seem pretty amenable to such an approach. Ultimately all depends on what the actual implementations look like though, and at what cost.
- mlyle 3y ago
  If you have quick enough failover to wifi-- who cares. I'll happily take 75% availability of dedicated 2gbps and less-congested wifi the other 25% of the time.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  LiFi signal bounces off walls. It doesn’t need direct line of sight. Think a light bulb lighting a room. But it doesn’t go around corners and through walls like WiFi.
fbdab103 3y ago
Isn't this solved by POE? For an office building which already has extensive electrical/networking/plumbing needs, pulling one dedicated wire for a robust networking connection seems worth it.
beenBoutIT 3y ago
It will work well in a lot of places where lag is an issue. Should make lag-free wireless video game controllers and full-bandwith lag-free headphones a reality.
- aifooh7Keew6xoo 3y ago
  at least until the shadow IT crew starts bringing in their LiFi lamp shade routers
hulitu 3y ago
Yeah, because everyone needs fluctuating light 8 hours a day. It is like seating do not destroy your health enough. /s

cornholio 3y ago

The speeds would be completely reliable until somebody starts walking around the office, disrupting the line of sight to the lightspot in the ceiling.

xoa 3y ago
Like, sure it'd vary by office, but a lot of us are in spaces with pretty high ceilings and even a very tall person wouldn't be able to disrupt the view of most lights. I think the assumption here is LiFi, or other highly directional tight beam possibilities, would require significantly more density of WAPs. Maybe not every light replaced but a solid grid in most spaces, and then clients would be regularly connected to different ones and rapidly jumped between them as needed due to movement/obstruction (conceptually the same as Starlink for example which constantly connects, tracks, and rapidly jumps between sats which are LEO and thus constantly moving over the horizon). Part of the implementation standard would be handling all the packet shuffling for that, which will have to be enormously better then WiFi Roaming. Higher density is more costly too of course, but even so depending on the performance that might well still be cheaper/easier then fiber drops everywhere, plus it'd avoid some of the minor but sticky end user physical interface issues of fiber connections. Whether the value is there remains to be seen and will no doubt vary, but as others have said a lot of typical office plans (with drop ceilings, ceiling rails or other designs meant to enable more modular ceiling use) on the surface seem pretty amenable to such an approach. Ultimately all depends on what the actual implementations look like though, and at what cost.
mlyle 3y ago
If you have quick enough failover to wifi-- who cares. I'll happily take 75% availability of dedicated 2gbps and less-congested wifi the other 25% of the time.
ianburrell 3y ago
LiFi signal bounces off walls. It doesn’t need direct line of sight. Think a light bulb lighting a room. But it doesn’t go around corners and through walls like WiFi.

fbdab103 3y ago

Isn't this solved by POE? For an office building which already has extensive electrical/networking/plumbing needs, pulling one dedicated wire for a robust networking connection seems worth it.

beenBoutIT 3y ago

It will work well in a lot of places where lag is an issue. Should make lag-free wireless video game controllers and full-bandwith lag-free headphones a reality.

aifooh7Keew6xoo 3y ago
at least until the shadow IT crew starts bringing in their LiFi lamp shade routers

hulitu 3y ago

Yeah, because everyone needs fluctuating light 8 hours a day. It is like seating do not destroy your health enough. /s