LI-FI - better security than Wi-Fi

The benefits of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi, other than potentially much faster speeds, is that because light cannot pass through walls, it makes it a whole lot more secure, and as Anthony Cuthbertson points out at IBTimes UK, his also means there’s less interference between devices.

“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,” Haas said. “In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future.”

More hops, the better! /s

6 Likes

I totally forgot, but this is LiFi in action :stuck_out_tongue: the latest version
Harald Haas: Forget Wi-Fi. Meet the new Li-Fi Internet | TED Talk

Hmmm I can’t really say it’s super secure, because in the example, he removes the light from the hole in the table. So a drone could still hover in the middle between a laserstation A & your solarpanels B (drone in the middle attack (if something like that even exists)) :sob:

1 Like

With LiFi you have to assume that outside light can be intercepted. Even highly focused laser

So like WiFi encryption is essential.

Also solar panels are not responsive enough for high speed LiFi no matter what the “experts” say. The solution is an additional receiver mounted with the panels to give you the ability to receive at high speeds.

2 Likes

Out of curiosity would you consider 50 mbits/second high speed? That is the claim made by Haas Harald in the link posted above.

LiFi has been tested in a lab situation to reach 100+GBits/Sec

If they ever can modulate it like what happens with RF, then expect many TBits/Sec on each colour band. At this stage from what I read they are just switching the light between intensities.

The problems are environment. Natural light is its enemy.

1 Like

Article said 233gbps.

Edited: I think this is more suitable for indoor enviroment, rater than outdoor environment.

1 Like

Yeah, the 50 mbits/second was for off-the shelf components.

Sorry, to answer you directly, 50Mbits/sec is not high speed in the context of WiFi/net/LiFi/Mesh.

Mesh in the context of SAFE could see a reasonable amount of traffic traversing the mesh to internet exit points and between nodes if they happen to be close in XOR space. So 50Mbits/sec would be the minimum you’d need for fast operations. That is available in WiFi now, so I’d say for LiFi to be viable it’d need to be much faster considering other limitations of LiFi

The LiFi articles are great at specifying the “download” speed, but what of upload. To take an extreme the street light example would have some difficulties, the street light “drowns” any signal from a device sending data back to it. After all its purpose to pump out massive amounts of light for illumination, and is high up.

I’d say outside of indoor applications & direct laser, LiFi has a deal of evolving to do before its poised to take over WiFi in the general sense. How many teenagers are going to be happy if they have to surf the net in a well lit room?

1 Like

This article about Li-Fi was on the front page of reddit today. And I added the pic for viewing pleasure!

Couldn’t you combine the two technologies? I mean to use the above example of the house and the mountain, what if it was cloudy or god forbid a flock of birds flew over the beam of something blocking out your signal. Essentially you’re having the same issues one would with solar power save that Li-Fi can be maintained over 24hrs and costs energy and solar is a regular day/night shedule that provides power.

So how about this:

Say you had a neighbourhood with houses reletively close to one another, you know suburbia or something. Fix each house with a Li-Fi mesh network unit so that internet can be relayed between them in a grid pattern. That way if there’s a break it won’t affect the entire neighborhood. Private individuals don’t generally share their wi-fi with the general public anyway. Next relay this grid to either a mountain or something via a more powerful Li-Fi or use traditional wi-fi radios (perhaps this is where SDR could come in) to relay the signal to other areas or provide general public access points. There’s no need for only one type of information transmission technology to be used.

2 Likes

Exactly. There is nothing wrong with variety of technologies just as long the purpose is to move data as long it is designed to move data to the specific node without knowing what the data provides. It should do nothing but that. Realistically, to convert light data into electromagnetic data requires a relay system. So you are corrected by that. You can combined a lot of ways to communicate each other which is why we are able to communicate globally.

There are always a throttle in certain spots so it is wise to reroute it. You could build a local fiber meshnet, then latch onto another corporate cable system, and have it transfer to other city. The corporate cable and ISP won’t know what the data says because it is encrypted, but it knows it is traced back to the relay/node in that region. Nothing else. That is great but the node operator gets screwed. This also means any person who sends encrypted message across “illegal encryption,” the corporate ISP will cut your line off, and node operator will face jail/law suit. If EU bans encryption, then the people inside of EU, will have to take drastic action and gain control of the cable lines but they cannot because of the illegal actions. Try to decentralize it, they’ll hunt by using radio frequencies. Use wifi, then they can easily capture your node. So their best solution is to secretly lay down cables, and/or Li-Fi.

2 Likes
1 Like

Li-Fi is 100 times Faster than wi-fi. Light Bulbs could be used for delivering Data.Li-Fi is a new method of delivering data. It uses the visible spectrum rather than radio waves. For the firt time, this new breakthrough technology has been tested in a working office.

The Li-Fi system uses standard light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit electronic data signals, which will enable users to access the internet through the ordinary lighting systems in schools, workplaces and homes. This revolutionary invention has the potential to bring cheap, energy efficient and super-secure wireless access to the world.

Li-Fi is a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC).

With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.

2 Likes