LIFI and WI-Fi

WIFI is soon to be obsolete along with those who stay mired in past technology.

It looks like our resident WIFI guru is getting behind the times. It's perfectly understandable for a person of his age to have difficulty understanding new technology. A new crop of younger, smarter computer savvy geeks have invented a new technology that promises to replace WIFI much like computer keyboards have replaced typewriters and fax machines, Both heralded as marvels of their age and both quickly becoming extinct

They call it LIFI, invented by Harold Haas of the University of Edinburgh in 2011, it uses visible light communication (VLC) to send data at extremely high speeds. It works like an incredibly fast signal lamp, flashing on and off in order to relay messages in binary code which is all made up of ones and zeros. The technology was able to transmit up to 224 gigabits per second. To put this in perspective, Wi-Fi is capable of reaching speeds of around 600 megabits per second.For those of you confused by megabits and gigabytes lets just say WIFI equates to a covered wagon rolling slowly across the prairie while LIFI is more like the space shuttle in orbit

Li-Fi also boasts a number of other benefits over Wi-Fi. For instance, the fact that the signal is carried by optical light means that it cannot travel through walls, therefore enhancing the security of local networks. The use of the visible spectrum could allow Li-Fi to send messages across a much wider range of frequencies than Wi-Fi, which operates at the frequencies of 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz.

As such, it has been suggested that Li-Fi could provide the answer to increasing frequency congestion as Internet usage continues to rise across the world. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, global monthly data usage is expected to exceed 24.3 exabytes by 2019 – a volume which current wireless connections are not able to handle.

In a recent TED talk, Haas insisted that household LED lightbulbs could easily be converted into Li-Fi transmitters, providing Internet users with more efficient connections. “All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission,” he said. It is also worth mentioning that the speed at which these LEDs flicker in order to relay data is too fast for the human eye to perceive, so users will not have to worry about annoying flashes in their ambient light.

While Century Village resident experts argue and debate the ups and downs of WIFI They have their heads so far into WIFI they have yet to see the light that is fickering the message of the future. Someone should type up a fax message and send it to them.

Neil J. Moore