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Network Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for asking questions about professionally managed networks in a business environment. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about network engineering.

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Using sound waves in layer 1

14

Is it possible, in theory, to use sound waves as the physical medium to transmit data over a network?

In other words, could you implement layer 1 of the OSI networking model using sound waves or am I totally misunderstanding the physics/networking concepts?

2 Answers

4

Yes it’s possible. In fact, Amazon Dash buttons use ultrasound as a medium.

3

It's been done. I used to have a 300-baud acoustic layer 1 device.


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Using sound waves in layer 1

14

Is it possible, in theory, to use sound waves as the physical medium to transmit data over a network?

In other words, could you implement layer 1 of the OSI networking model using sound waves or am I totally misunderstanding the physics/networking concepts?


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9

Yes it’s possible. In fact, Amazon Dash buttons use ultrasound as a medium.

edit

Here's an explanation of how Dash buttons work. They just use audio for configuration from iOS devices; the normal operation is over wi-fi. - Zach Lipton Jan 21, 2019 at 9:06

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