Social network giant Facebook has a grand and ambitious plan to connect the work into the Internet. To turn this plan into reality, Facebook has created projects like Aquila and ARIES in order to deliver Internet connection into hard to reach places in the world. Recently, Facebook announced that it is adding a third project called Terragraph.

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Facebook's Aquila project aims to deliver Internet connection by using a solar-powered plane and then beam signals into the ground for users to use. Project ARIES plans to extend this connectivity to rural areas cheaper and faster so that people can be able to access the Internet cheaply.

On the other hand, Facebook's newest project Terragraph aims to deliver low-cost, high-speed wireless network with visions of replacing fiber connection in huge cities.

Facebook announced that it will kick off Terragraph in downtown San Jose before the end of the year, provided that the trial run conducted on the company's Menlo Park headquarters is successful. The project will install affordable IPv6-only nodes equipped with WiGig chips on utility poles, lamp posts and small building complexes that will broadcast Internet signal using unlicensed 60GHz spectrum.

Facebook vice president of engineering Jay Parikh said during the company's F8 developers conference that while the unlicensed 60GHz spectrum does not have a very good range and can be easily absorbed by oxygen and water, it is perfect for Facebook's plan of creating a low-cost street-level Wi-Fi network.

As part of this development, Facebook is upgrading Project ARIES by adding more antennas in order to extend connectivity. ARIES will put out a base station that has 96 antennas which is capable of supporting up to 24 streams at 71 bits per second. Facebook's mission is to increase the project's connectivity speed by up to 10 times while at the same time reduce its cost by up to 10 times as well.

TagsFacebook, Facebook Project, Facebook Project Terragraph, Terragraph, Project Terragraph, Internet, Facebook Internet project