This article presents an overview of state-of-the-art HF technology with software-defined radios as their core for direct, anytime, anywhere-to-anywhere-on-Earth connectivity without other communication infrastructure in between. Modern physical and link-layer protocols provide for automatic link establishment, link maintenance, channel selection and radio control. Extensions of these protocols provide robustness for low signal-to-noise conditions, mechanisms to enhance latency and throughput performance, and optimization approaches for a variety of modulation schemes. High efficiency transmitter designs potentially reduce DC input power requirements by factors of 2 or even 3. Split-site stations physically separate the transmitter and receiver to improve antenna decoupling. Future development includes generic IP infrastructure connectivity.