Rot free space optics.

This company called Lightpointe introduced some neat products a while back: point-to-point laser-based communications that work in open air without any license requirement.

I was so jazzed I showed my boss the trade, and he says where would we use such a thing? The initial product was intended for use in a city, where a network could be strung between two buildings... so, probably not something we'd use in our sprawling campus. But when we decided to outfit a new building (well, not new, a legacy of the state, but new to us), we gave their product a try, reasoning that it was cheaper than radio.

Five years later: it's performed pretty much as expected, which is to say it gives us fine throughput until we get snow, fog or a storm (three things we get a lot of actually), at which point it drops deader than a beached whale. But it got us through, for a while.

(Fact is, the Lightpointe stays up longer than comparably priced radio would, a major selling point for us at the time. But I digress.)

Problem being, the project to link the new campus with hard fiber was delayed, first by money, so we shared the cost with an adjacent institution, then by bureaucrazy (when we are one patch cable away from lighting it up).

Well, we already have a connection right? Grrr... the problems we have had over the past day or two have been, ah, interesting. I would so appreciate a speedy resolution to the delay on the fiber!

This product was a fine compromise the day it was put into production, but now I say rot these free-space-optic doohickies.