How does the holonet work?

[OmegaGuy]

From what I understand, the holonet allows instantaneous transmission across the galaxy. Yet hyperdrive takes a while for a ship to reach one place in the galaxy from another. So how is the holonet so much faster?

[Knife]

I can take a guess. Hyperdrive is pushing mass though to a tachyonic state, while holonet puts energy though a tachyonic state. I don't know if energy will still travel faster than mass in such a state, but it would explain the time difference. You have to figure that it only takes less than a day to go half way across the galaxy, so cutting that down even an order of magnitude would pretty much give in instant comm.

[Luke Starkiller]

You could think of it this way too; we can communicate with people around the world (and have been able to for a while) all but instantly, but we can't travel nearly that fast.

[Cykeisme]

Aren't "hyperwaves" the official handwave explanation to FTL communications and sensors?
In general, the military has powerful point-to-point hyperwave tranceivers, whereas civilians rely on the HoloNet network of receivers/retransmitters (routers?).

Of course, there isn't even a hypothesis as to what hyperwaves are. Perhaps they travel as much faster than a tachyonic ship in hyperspace, as light travels faster than a baryonic ship in realspace. That'd make latency delays negligible.

[Darth Cronos the Proud]

From the New Essential Guide to Weapons & Technology, pg. 143:

A HoloNet transmission is initially generated by a standard holorecorder, but then is broadcast via a powerful tranceiver. From the tranceiver, the HoloNet transmission is funneled through a network of satellites capable of relaying and boosting messages through hyperspace simutunnels. The HoloNet signals travel along very specific channels, designed to carry massive amounts of data. Under the New Republic, the HoloNet network consists of hundreds of thousands of satellites. Once the signal reaches its destination, it is received by another tranceiver.

This seems to fit with the NJO series where the Vong started to knock out HoloNet relay stations, effectively cutting off sections of the Galaxy from the NR.

[Surlethe]

Of course, there isn't even a hypothesis as to what hyperwaves are. Perhaps they travel as much faster than a tachyonic ship in hyperspace, as light travels faster than a baryonic ship in realspace. That'd make latency delays negligible.

The problem with this assumption is that all energy travels at c; it's only massed objects which can acquire velocity beyond c (after jumping the asymptotic energy barrier, of course). The SWTC, of course, explains this well. So the analogy of light-baryonic ship in realspace doesn't really make sense when compared to tachyonic propagation; if anything, light travels slower than any tachyonic ship.

If I guessed, I'd say the holonet possibly makes use of some quantum information exchange, or maybe hyperwaves are some sort of analogous phenomenon going on with gravitons.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Why can't they just be pulses of diffuse but easily detectable matter traveling at hyperspace? Tachyon beams, if you will.

[Wyrm]

Why can't they just be pulses of diffuse but easily detectable matter traveling at hyperspace? Tachyon beams, if you will.

It would have to be, because anything traveling faster than c would have to have imaginary mass (which we assume to be somewhat exchangable with real mass). Massless particles are strictly restricted to traveling c.

Oh, and Knife, I'm afraid I'll have to call you on saying "holonet puts energy though a tachyonic state". Energy is a conserved number, and not a substance. We talk as if we can shove it around like water, but there is no case that energy transfer occurs without the interaction of matter.

[Knife]

Why can't they just be pulses of diffuse but easily detectable matter traveling at hyperspace? Tachyon beams, if you will.

It would have to be, because anything traveling faster than c would have to have imaginary mass (which we assume to be somewhat exchangable with real mass). Massless particles are strictly restricted to traveling c.

Oh, and Knife, I'm afraid I'll have to call you on saying "holonet puts energy though a tachyonic state". Energy is a conserved number, and not a substance. We talk as if we can shove it around like water, but there is no case that energy transfer occurs without the interaction of matter.

Meh, I'll leave the real physics to the smart ones, I was just tossing out an idea. I guess, you could just use tachyons rather than energy coverted to a tachyonic state, if such a state is a no-no. Pulsed tachyons for a digital signal?

[Spartan]

Attack of the Clones: ICS -

"Hyperwaves: supralight signal for real-time trans-galactic communications through public HoloNet relays, Hyperwave trancievers require almost stellar-scale power, yet signals can be blocked by nearby massive obstructions or by deflector shielding."

Yeah, the HoloNet uses hyperwaves. These "hyperspace simutunnels" sound like they might be hyperspace wormholes though, especially since it mentions specific high volume "channels". Beaming normal em signal through a wormhole maybe? That just doesn't sound like SW.

The TF coreship had a hyperwave tranciever that could reach anywhere in the galaxy without using HoloNet relays (ref: ATOC:ICS).

The Munificent-class Star Frigate has a long-range hyperwave transciever that can establish communication links anywhere in the galaxy (ref: ROTS:ICS).

The IBC uses space stations and and armed communications ships to relay signals (ref: ROTS:ICS).

Sounds like the HoloNet really isn't necessary if you've got money to spend. But I wonder if the main benefit of the Holonet is it speed. If I remember correctly there was a comm lag mentioned in the Thrawn triology, after the one of the relays went down.

[Lazarus]

IIRC, there were mentions in the Thrawn trilogy to shields blocking communications, and the Empire coming up with a way to stop this? Is this solely in these books, and so is overidden?
I had always thought that the Holonet was a collection of hundreds of thousands of unmanned stations which received and sent comms through hyperspace, and as the comms had no mass, they could travel instantaneously through hyperspace. As far as an explanation for how this occurs goes, we don't really know the properties of hyperspace, and how fast mass-less waves can travel through it, so therefore this would seem to be the logical explanation?

[Wyrm]

IIRC, there were mentions in the Thrawn trilogy to shields blocking communications, and the Empire coming up with a way to stop this? Is this solely in these books, and so is overidden?

I can't comment on the canonicity of this, but if it's not overridden, it strongly indicates that hyperwaves do indeed travel through real space.

I don't know what to make of talk of "hyperspace simutunnels". However, the "channels" Spartan mentions may be just a way of chopping up the hyperwave frequency spectrum.

I had always thought that the Holonet was a collection of hundreds of thousands of unmanned stations which received and sent comms through hyperspace, and as the comms had no mass, they could travel instantaneously through hyperspace. As far as an explanation for how this occurs goes, we don't really know the properties of hyperspace, and how fast mass-less waves can travel through it, so therefore this would seem to be the logical explanation?

Well, from my previous comment on the matter, now you know that the particles traveling at hypervelocities must have some imaginary mass. It can be a small imaginary mass, but it can't be zero. A hyperwave must have some notion of mass, and it must be squared-negative in magnitude (ie, imaginary).

"Holonet" does imply that the infastructure is set up in a kind of network (perhaps you get higher gain, higher bandwidth, smaller power consumption or something when set up as a network).

[Stark]

There are examples of point-to-point galaxy-wide real-time comms: I imagine the holonet simply exists as a low-cost, low-investment alternative. The difference between a satphone and a mobile phone, if you will - obviously the military will use the point-to-point technology, but it's far more economical etc for consumers (quintillions of consumers) to use an established network and less powerful transcievers.

[RThurmont]

Perhaps the holonet consists of continually moving streams of tachyonic matter. Holonet tranceivers interrupt the streams in a systematic pattern, perhaps using lasers to etch binary patterns into the streams, symbolizing the SW equivalent of "bits." When the stream reaches the destination node, the tranceiver at that node would somehow inject tachyons back into the stream, to literally take the datagram (in this case, a hole) off of the holonet. Another possibility would be that instead of interrupting the tachyonic stream, lasers could be used to alter it, for instance, changing the color of the matter. The one downside to this theory is the obvious large quantity of matter needed, and the difficulty of accelerating it to a tachyonic state.

Another possibility could be that the holonet operates on an interdimensional basis, taking advantage of wormholes or other spacial connections, so that tachyons transmitted into it travel only a very short distance compared to the distance a ship using a hyperdrive would have to travel. The problem with this is of course, that it begs the question, why can't ordinary vessels use such a system?

This is one of the more fascinating aspects of SW, I'll hand you that. The role of the holonet is clear, what interests me is how you would actually get such a thing to work.

[Cykeisme]

Just to clarify, I do believe the more accurate question would be "how do hyperwaves work?"

The HoloNet is simply a networked (as opposed to point-to-point) hyperwave communications system.

[Lazarus]

Perhaps Hyperwaves are a technobabble explanation for something which is not forbidden by the laws of physics, and therefore is theoretically possible, but we don't have any practical explanation for. Are faster than light communications possible? They aren't forbidden by the LoP, so possibly. Do we have any idea how they would work? Nope. So...hyperwaves. What are hyperwaves? Well, they aren't like normal waves. How are they different? Dunno, but they allow FTL communications.

[Winston Blake]

I remember a quirk about how tachyons would work from the SWTC Hyperspace page, that as an object loses energy its velocity increases, potentially to infinity.

If hyperwaves are just signals consisting of normal particles bumped into hyperspace, then you could put a tiny region of extremely strong artificial gravity in front of the beam, simulating a mass shadow. This sort of potential barrier could then almost block the hyperparticles such that they leave with a very small energy and hence huge velocity.

This would be impossible for ships since hitting a mass shadow destroys them. Subatomic particles don't have to worry about that, and an artificial mass shadow can be finely controlled to keep them from scattering.

Now, you'd expect it to be called 'hyperparticle communications' rather than 'hyperwave', but i'm sure wave-particle duality and modulation of the pulses can account for the 'wave' terminology.

[Tychu]

From what I understand, the holonet allows instantaneous transmission across the galaxy. Yet hyperdrive takes a while for a ship to reach one place in the galaxy from another. So how is the holonet so much faster?

the same for our modern technology
since the advent of Radio and TV we have been "polluting" space with our I love Lucy's. Those shows, Hitlers speeches have reached the nearest star system, yet we can't propel a drone or a person to the nearest star in the same time it took our Radio and TV waves to reach there