When you live in a rural area you just have to know about backhauling. I live out in Pittsylvania County and I consider myself a modest backhauler.
I have daily tasks that involve collecting someone or something from my home and backhauling it into the city. Quite often I am backhauling children from home to school or soccer or swimming.
I don’t want to backhaul with a half-empty car, so I usually load up with recycling, dry cleaning and packages to be mailed at the post office to make efficient use of my backhauling trip.
None of my backhauling holds a candle to the serious Danville/Pittsylvania County backhauling which typically includes an extra large, tough pick-up truck hauling anything from a four-wheeler to a small tractor. There is no limit to backhauling capabilities given the proper pick-up.
Imagine my surprise when I began to hear computer folks talking about backhauling data. “Huh,” I thought, “Bits of data are about all you can backhaul in a Miata.”
The high tech industry has directly lifted the term backhaul from the trucking industry. Peterbilt and Mack burn up the highways backhauling physical goods from outlying sites to a central location. For example, trucks pick up watermelons from the growers and bring them all to a central warehouse where they can be distributed to the supermarkets.
In technical terms, backhauling data involves bringing the data from a remote site to a central point.
In satellite communications, an example of backhauling would be collecting a real video feed from the studio where it is produced and backhauling it to a central point where it can be uploaded to the satellite. From the satellite it is then distributed to the viewing public.
In terms of the Internet, backhauling data involves bringing the data from a network to the Internet backbone. For example, data is collected at the local Internet Service Provider (ISP) and then backhauled across fiber lines to the Internet backbone.
Bits do not travel in the bed of a pick-up truck. Most commonly bits travel slowly over phone lines or rapidly over fiber optic cable.
In an effort to avoid the labor and time it takes to lay or hang fiber, wireless transmission options are also used to backhaul bits. Wireless backhauling involves generating a radio frequency signal that represents bits. The signal is transmitted at one site, travels through the air like radio waves, then is captured by a receiver at the other end. Unlike a radio, which converts the received signal to a musical output, the wireless data receiver converts the signal to digital data or bits.
One of the newest wireless technologies for backhauling data from a remote to a central location is employed by a company called Terabeam. Terabeam has developed a laser light transmitter and receiver system. The rapid pulse of the laser light transmits data through the air between buildings. It is laser light optical transmission similar to that in the glass fibers of fiber optic cable only without the cable. Air is the transmission medium instead of glass.
Terabeam backhauls data from a local area network within an office building, transmits it out of an upper floor window to a receiver in an adjacent office building window. The data is backhauled by hopping from building to building until it reaches a central point where it can be sent directly to the Internet backbone.
I think it was mighty bold for the high tech industry to take on backhauling. To me it’s sort of like Britney Spears trying to be Loretta Lynn. “Coalminer’s Daughter” just doesn’t fit when you have a bellybutton ring. I say we send those bits backpacking instead of backhauling!
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