Hypercomm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A hypercomm, in the Star Wars universe, is the only device which can break the speed of light barrier, and communicate with minimal lag anywhere in the Star Wars galaxy. They first appear in The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader communicates with Emperor Palpatine during his search for Han Solo and Princess Leia in the Hoth system.
Minimal lag does not mean no lag- transmissions over extremely long distances (from the Outer Rim to Coruscant, for example) can have noticeable lags on the scale of seconds; thus techniques like "holocoding" are used to hide this by reducing the amount of data needed, which also reduces the cost of a hypercomm call (as most calls must be routed through the HoloNet if they are to travel any significant distance, and the HoloNet appears to be a combination of a packet-switched network and a circuit-switched network, implying that each call may well tie up an entire circuit if full holograms are transmitted).