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Upping the ante for mobile devices, Atheros offers a series of chips that consume almost no standby power: In recent years, every new chip design for mobile devices focuses on three factors: integration, or the number of features backed into one chip to reduce the cost, form factor, and power use of multiple chips; size; and standby/idle power. That last can be the killer. You can have tiny chips, but if they pull several percentage points of the in-use power to maintain status on a network or scan for networks, it’s hard to get out of the gate.
With less power consumed, the longer lived a mobile device is, and the more likely a manufacturer is to design high-bandwidth uses. Atheros’s AR6002 series (single-band g, dual-band a/g) consumers what the company calls “near-zero standby power,” and 70 percent less than competing offerings in active mode. Their two examples are that the chip could be used on a standard phone to provide 100 hours of VoIP or download 200 GB of data.
Chips will ship in quantity in the first quarter of 2008.
Posted by Glennf at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The U.S. International Trade Commission bars imports of newer handsets containing Qualcomm 3G cell data chips: This ban stems from a patent dispute with Broadcom, in which the commission found that Qualcomm infringed on Broadcom patents. Handset models previously imported may continue to be brought into the country from overseas manufacture. However, no chips or modules containing these chips, nor any device released after June 7 that contains Qualcomm chips may be imported. Qualcomm also must halt some domestic activities, too.
This should not affect Apple’s iPhone, which uses so-called 2.5G EDGE technology that doesn’t appear to be affected by this decision. Apple may have, in retrospect, had a stroke of luck by not including UMTS or HSDPA, GSM flavors of third-generation (3G) cellular data networks that might have wound up using Qualcomm chips. (W-CDMA, while a GSM standard, contains technology patented by Qualcomm; Qualcomm also makes UMTS and HSDPA chips.)
While Qualcomm has little impact currently on the Wi-Fi market, they have patents and technology that cover all major third-generation (3G) cell phones data networks and handsets. Disputes have arisen in the US and Europe over Qualcomm’s extent of claims of what technology they control through patents, and their licensing fees. Broadcom and a number of handset makers have a variety of lawsuits against Qualcomm and Qualcomm against them.
Qualcomm purchased Wi-Fi chipmaker Airgo, the earliest mass developer of multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) antenna technology to supplement 802.11 specifications; and has staked out contrary positions around mobile WiMax, initially completely opposed to it and waging a propaganda war against it, and later purchasing a firm that had WiMax equipment in its portfolio.
President Bush can overturn this order.
Posted by Glennf at 1:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Atheros announces fast, two-radio gateway, USB adapter, revised single-radio gateway: Chipmaker Atheros announced today that it has dramatically expanded the variety of its Draft N reference designs to include the smallest form factor USB 2.0 after-market adapter and two new routers, including a dual-radio access point that can achieve 400 Mbps in aggregated TCP/IP throughput. Reference designs are licensed to manufacturers which modify and package them as unique products.
Atheros faces sharp competition from Airgo, Broadcom, and Marvell in the general market for providing Wi-Fi chips to manufacturers of consumer and enterprise equipment - the so-called OEM or original equipment manufacturer - and additionally from Intel in putting Wi-Fi into laptops. Intel would prefer its computer-making partners buy the whole Centrino Core 2 Duo shebang from them, Draft N chips included. These new designs are clearly aimed to ensure Atheros’s manufacturing partners have the largest range of possibilities with the least amount of independent engineering.
In a briefing last week, Atheros’s vice president of marketing Todd Antes said the firm sees the inflection point for Draft N products outpacing 802.11g products coming by 2008 as consumer products with Draft N become less expensive and more available, along with integration of Draft N adapters in notebooks and computers. “It’s no longer just the early adopters,” Antes said, who use Draft N.
Continue reading "Atheros Expands Draft N Options with USB, Routers"
Posted by Glennf at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Atheros designs Bluetooth chip aimed at PCs: Most Bluetooth chips used in computers are repurposed from mobile applications, Atheros claims. Their new product is more efficiently designed with a lower cost of goods and integrated flash memory.
Also features the Solid Gold Dancers: Broadcom said that they will offer a single chip with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and FM radios on board. The chip uses a 65-nanometer (nm) CMOS process, which means its circuits are tightly packed using the most common manufacturing techniques. Size has a relationship to power requirements. The Wi-Fi is a/b/g; the Bluetooth 2.0+EDR with 2.1 upgrades possible.
Update: CSR on Feb. 7 also announced a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM converged chip platform. The company released specific throughput figures, rare in the industry, noting that Wi-Fi by itself could achieve 23 Mbps in their chip designs, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth together using “collision detection logic” would drop Wi-Fi down to 18 Mbps of net throughput.
On Feb. 7, Texas Instruments also announced a triple-threat, this time with 802.11n.
Posted by Glennf at 8:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom announced a family of 802.11g Wi-Fi single-chip systems designed for mobile devices: Without being an electrical engineer, having a lab, and perhaps manufacturing products, it’s tricky to evaluate power and performance claims on the chip level as made by wireless chipmakers. Broadcom states that their latest device has the best power performance, best coexistence with Bluetooth, and improved radio sensitivity compared to competitors’ offerings, and their own previous options. Broadcom says that their software architecture controls power at every stage of data transactions, using just 270 milliwatts in active mode, which they state is the lowest in the industry.
With a 50-square-millimeter footprint, Broadcom expects the chips could be embedded into the smallest Wi-Fi devices or be part of low-power modules. The single chip includes the radio, baseband, computer interface (media access control), and power management circuitry.
Posted by Glennf at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Swing the noisemakers, folks: Yes, this is just a typical industry press release. But it’s also a good milestone to mark. Broadcom was the first company to ship production 802.11g in advance of the ratification of that standard, and has now shipped 100m 802.11g chipsets. With that mark in mind, it’s likely that we must be over 500m 802.11 chipsets of all kinds from all vendors.
Posted by Glennf at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Texas Instruments introduces a Bluetooth chip that rocks, dude! Its BlueLink 6.0 platform couples FM radio reception (mono and stereo) with Bluetooth in a single chip. This module also co-exists neatly with Wi-Fi. The notion is that a handset could be an FM tuner without additional chips or integration; this feature must be a top request as music players are added into phones. One analyst predicts 400m units with FM reception by the end of the decade.
Of course, if I put on my other hat, I know that HD Radio, a digitally encoded form of AM and FM radio, has begun making headway in the market. HD Radio uses unused guard bands around the primary analog frequencies to deliver crisp, even multi-channel audio. It makes a lot of sense in about two years to have HD Radio-only AM and FM tuners in handsets. About 700 stations broadcast HD Radio today and only a few car receivers, one high-end home receiver, and one tabletop radio can tune in these broadcasts. A few thousand stations will have added HD by 2007.
The platform works with all common cell phone standards (2G through 3G), as well as Linux, Microsoft, and Symbian operating systems. The chips in two modules are in sampling with devices expected in early 2007 based on the technology.
Posted by Glennf at 9:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It’s not as big a move as IBM/Freescale to Intel, but it’s a shift, nonetheless: Broadcom scored an early trifecta with 802.11g back in late 2002 and early 2003 by signing Apple, Belkin, and Linksys for a round of 802.11g-based products. They also swept in Buffalo and several other firms (notably missing D-Link and NetGear) in that heady run-up to 802.11g ratification.
In the latest Apple products, the first to be based on Intel processors using the Core Duo chips, sources outside of Apple told me that Atheros chips have been incorporated: it’s true, but Broadcom hasn’t been abandoned. Both Atheros and Broadcom chips are specified in Apple documents and are shown in FCC filings.
It’s not odd that with a new system architecture Apple would have reviewed chip suppliers, and they may have chosen to work with both Broadcom and Atheros to have competition for their business. There’s a limited number of PCI Express-based Wi-Fi chips, which is what the internal, included AirPort Express hardware uses.
The MacBook Pro (the PowerBook replacement) and the Intel-based iMac support 802.11a for the first time, as well. Apple isn’t emphasizing the 802.11a inclusion, and the technical specifications only say “802.11g standard.”
Although Steve Jobs declared 802.11a “dead” back in Jan. 2003, it was clear he thought it was a non-starter in the consumer market, and the enterprise was far from a win. In Jan. 2006, 802.11a’s place as a larger spectrum swath without legacy slower equipment as a way to run more dense, faster enterprise networks and handle campus-wide VoIP is pretty clear. Apple adding 802.11a lets them sell more easily into enterprises and academia that are adopting 802.11a.
One rumor cited by AppleInsider is that the demonstration of the MacBook Pro’s built-in iSight video camera was carried over 802.11a to avoid conflicting with the many ad hoc 802.11b networks running at the keynote venue.
Posted by Glennf at 10:10 AM | Comments (2)
Broadcom has declined so far to provide any non-licensed access to its Wi-Fi chips: A project that has been working to reverse engineer access using legal means has released its first working drivers for Broadcom 4300 series chips. The project requires the use of the SoftMAC software as well to compile working drivers within Linux. The first successful use was documented in email Dec. 4 to the developer’s mailing sent from a PowerBook running Linux with the project’s drivers installed.
Atheros has allowed a third party to create a layer between the low-level functions of its chips and high-level drivers. The madwifi Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) prevents developers from having access to most of the radio functionality, which would might allow use of frequencies that aren’t legal in particular countries, use of encodings that aren’t allowed, and other regulatory problems.
The Economist magazine ran an article early this year critiquing the timidity of Atheros and Broadcom, noting that “if the firms are really worried, they could release most of the interface, keeping back those features that are legally sensitive.” Neither Atheros nor Broadcom speak much publicly about this matter. [Link via Jim Thompson]
Posted by Glennf at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Atheros’s latest Wi-Fi chip includes all 802.11g access point features in a single piece of silicon: They say it drops the component count 40 percent over its previous chipset. The cheaper ($12.50 each in quantity), smaller, and lower-powered these chips become, the more likely that APs shrink (they’re still huge) or are found built-in to more equipment.
Posted by Glennf at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The company is working with Spansion, a flash memory maker, to stack Wi-Fi components: The new approach of stacking components vertically could allow Wi-Fi to be a layer in a package containing memory, reducing power and space needs. Spansion is a venture of AMD and Fujitsu.
Posted by Glennf at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The next-generation Intel chips will use less for more: This answers the conundrum posed by Apple’s switch from Freescale/IBM chips to Intel, in which CEO Steve Jobs said Intel’s roadmap offered dramatically improved wattage to computational power ratios. Next year’s mobile processor will use one-third of its predecessor’s power.
This increased performance with lower power requirements makes it easier to produce lighter, longer-lived mobile devices. Intel demonstrated some running a beta of Microsoft’s next consumer release, Vista, with Wi-Fi and WiMax connectivity. (Since mobile WiMax is but a glimpse in the future, I’d be curious what actual chips were onboard.)
Intel also said that it would work with Cisco to make better connections with the networking giant’s access points, including using special sauce that would allow an adapter to connect to the most available AP by load (rather than the most opportunistically available), and handle VoWLAN connections more fluidly. Cisco and Intel will have to update respective systems.
Posted by Glennf at 3:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Reports are coming in from all over about Intel’s breakthrough Wi-Fi chip design: But when you read a technical report, linked here, it’s a not-yet-commercial design that simply demonstrates Intel’s ability to incorporate 802.11a, b, g, and n within the same sort of flexible chip manufacturing process—CMOS—used for the largest wafer formats and highest yields. It’s not that it’s not interesting, but it’s not yet a big deal given that 802.11n won’t be finalized until what’s looking like early 2007, and other chipsets already offer a/b/g in CMOS at low power.
Posted by Glennf at 5:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Atheros will ship a/b/g and b/g chips for PCI Express in third quarter: This next-generation bus design supports a much improved architecture for maximum throughput across all cards, and Broadcom and Atheros are both interested in being on top of its deployment. Atheros says that they have a single chip solution that integrates into a single-sided PCI Express card; sampling is already underway to its best customers.
Broadcom announced in early April that they have a PCI Express chipset—ostensibly at least two chips—that’s was in sampling then. I expect a war of the words over throughput, cost of goods, and other factors in the months ahead.
Posted by Glennf at 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom claims first Wi-Fi chipset for PCI Express: PCI Express is the next next generation of motherboard-based expansion technology with a higher-speed switched bus architecture for better throughput. PCI Express (PCIe) can push 1 Gbyte/s of data; even the fastest proprietary flavors of 802.11 support about 3 to 4 Mbyte/s (30 to 40 Mbps), so it’s not a stretch to have multiple cards in a single PCIe chassis, even. The Broadcom chipset is sampling now.
Posted by Glennf at 9:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Economist writes a call to open access to Broadcom and Atheros’s radio technology for greater innovation (subscription required): The writer argues that by keeping their lower-level radio functions and any access to it close to their vest, they’re discouraging wider uses of their chips and suppresses interesting projects from CUWiN and community wireless networking groups.
While the two companies produce Wi-Fi chips that don’t use formally use SDR, they have aspects of SDR that make their concerns about opening up full control reasonable. And The Economist only suggests that more access than zero would be worthwhile. There is the Madwifi project which involves one programmer who was given access to the RF innards to write an intermediary, proprietary bridge between open-source drivers and the Atheros chips. But that’s a pretty limited exposure.
Linux developers ask me all the time: when will Broadcom provide even that support? Perhaps The Economist’s prod will cause both companies to think about how to sell more chips without incurring the FCC’s wrath.
Mark Rakes notes that there’s already an active thread discussing the article over the madwifi newsgroup.
Update: I want to clarify previous remarks a bit. From more technically minded types, I’m reminded to mention that the SDR that Broadcom and Atheros use doesn’t allow access to all frequencies, as true SDR has the potential to do. Rather, it’s SDR in the sense that there are several frequencies ranges, including both licensed and unlicensed, in certain chipsets.
Atheros and Broadcom should try to strike a balance in offering an abstraction layer which provides mediation so that open-source work could be built on top of it that still conforms to Part 15 rules but has a greater degree of flexibility than the current Madwifi project—and would allow any Linux use for Broadcom chips.
Another update: Sascha sent the link for the paper on which parts of the argument in the Economist argument are based, which he and two colleagues co-authored and delivered at a conference in Sept. 2004. I disagree with their argument that FCC sanctions a strawman; they can’t be privy (nor can I) to the non-public aspects of working with the FCC and the issues surrounding partial SDR that might be part of the backstory to this issue.
Posted by Glennf at 11:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Atheros will ship its sub-$13 chip in Q1 2005: The all-in-one chip includes everything a wireless access point manufacturer needs, making it easier to embed 802.11g into other products or produce even cheaper gateways that have a full range of features and performance. The chip includes Super G, a set that mixes proprietary and future 802.11e extensions to improve throughput; Atheros’s distance-enhancing XR technology; and 802.11i with full AES encryption.
Posted by Glennf at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom says its newly revised 802.11g chips offer range without gimmicks: In an interview last week, Bill Bunch, senior product line manager for wireless, said that the single-chip 802.11g adapter and two-chip 802.11g router/access point products had dramatically improved receive sensitivity, which translates into increased range. “If you have better hearing, and you and I are talking, then I can walk away further, and we can continue to talk at a very decent throughput,” Bunch said. “It’s like we both went out and got a hearing aid.” The new technology is called BroadRange.
The new chips offer 50 percent greater range using the 125 High Speed Mode, Bunch said. “This gives you higher speed at every point that you care about.” I asked Bunch what the real world performance would be given, that Wi-Fi is often advertising as a “150 foot” technology that turns out to be much less in homes with real building materials.
Bunch said that the company tests against environments that give them realistic results: if you formerly could reach 50 feet in one direction in an interior space, he said, you should now be able to reach 75 feet. For most homes, a 150-foot diameter might be all that’s needed.
The adapter chip is available now; the router/AP chipset are at the sampling stage.
Posted by Glennf at 7:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Alereon says they demonstrated 480 Mbps and 320 Mbps speeds using UWB and the MBOA specification this week in their lab: Alereon is working in the Wireless USB and UWB worlds, and is creating chips in compliance with the Multi-Band OFDM Alliance (MBOA) approach.
The MBOA left behind efforts at the IEEE 802.15.3a task group to form an IEEE standard. Freescale (a Motorola spinoff) is pushing the technology behind its XtremeSpectrum UWB acquisition. That technology uses a “classical” UWB approach versus MBOA’s integration of a variety of wireless ideas into one standard that they say has a better chance of resulting in higher throughput. Freescale disputes this, and had tried in the past to get the MBOA approach ruled out of bounds by the FCC. The FCC essentially said it was fine.
The ultimate goal of the 802.15.3a task group was 480 Mbps at 10 meters; Alereon issued this press release to try to up the ante on its friendly and unfriendly competitors.
Press release follows this link:
Continue reading "Alereon Demos 480 Mbps UWB"
Posted by Glennf at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Motorola was an investor and customer; now, it’s an owner: Motorola will close the deal for an undisclosed amount to purchase MeshNetworks this quarter. MeshNetworks is a pure mesh firm, making cards, access points, and other devices that allow networks without central hubs. Motorola had invested in the firm through its venture arm, and distributes and licenses MeshNetworks software and hardware.
Motorola earlier purchased XtremeSpectrum, an early ultrawideband firm. The UWB assets became part of Freescale, Motorola’s semiconductor spinoff. Freescale becomes fully independent Dec. 2 when Motorola distributes Freescale stock to Motorola shareholders and removes its outstanding majority ownership of Freescale.
Posted by Glennf at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cambridge Radio Silicon (CSR)’s UniFi-1 is designed for low-power 802.11b/g and a/b/g: CSR is known for Bluetooth chipsets, and their new product might challenge Bluetooth’s advantage in cell phones and other devices. CSR says their all-in-one solution doesn’t require a host processor, nor (in the slightly larger consumer version of the chip) external flash memory. The chip will cost less than $8 in quantity plus $1 in other parts, which is a few dollars more than Bluetooth per unit. The tiny chipset will be available in samples this year and in production by mid-2005.
Reporting in ComputerWeekly.com indicates that the chipset uses much more power at full speed than a comparable Bluetooth chip, but most small devices can’t transmit at anything like the full WLAN speed. The lowest 802.11g OFDM speed (to avoid mixed b/g networks) would be just as appropriate for most handhelds’ capabilities.
Posted by Glennf at 9:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Register is reporting remarks from a Taiwan talk by an Intel marketing head on the return of Wi-Fi into future chipsets: Intel was supposed to deliver integrated Wi-Fi and access point technology in its latest Pentium chipsets, but failed to in part because of delivery schedules and manufacturers’ disinterest in the Wi-Fi component. The Register says that Sunil Kumar revealed the next Pentium 4 revisions called Lakeport and Glenwood would ship in the second half of 2005; the roadmap for these chips includes a Wi-Fi module. Whether access point functionality will be included is unknown, but reporter Tony Smith notes that these particular P4 models are aimed at a digital home marketplace.
Posted by Glennf at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Reports that Agere is exiting the Wi-Fi world are exaggerated: Agere clarified that it won’t continue to develop standalone Wi-Fi products but that it will focus on voice over Wi-Fi and the integration of Wi-Fi and cellular. Agere sees the potential for higher sales with less price pressure in the mobile phone market.
Posted by nancyg at 9:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom came out with a chipset designed for voice over Wi-Fi phones: The chips will enable phones to support voice over Wi-Fi as well as data applications. The chipset combines Broadcom’s 54g chip with Broadcom’s mobile VOIP processor.
Posted by nancyg at 9:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Consumer electronics and telephony will account for about half of expected revenue for WLAN chips in 2008, according to a new report from In-Stat/MDR: The research firm envisions more Wi-Fi capabilities being built into consumer electronics products as well as telephones, including those that integrate Wi-Fi with cellular.
Some Wi-Fi chip makers are already moving in the direction of home electronics. Vixs Systems introduced a reference design with drivers for Microsoft Windows Media Center and new MPEG encoders. The system is designed to improve video streaming over Wi-Fi.
Posted by nancyg at 8:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Follow the mergers, spinoffs, and sales: Broadcom might acquire Agere, says Light Reading: Lucent acquired WaveLAN, an early 802.11b chipmaker, and later spun off its Wi-Fi division when it turned Agere loose. Agere, in turn, sold its wireless LAN portfolio to Proxim when it seemed to be of less interest to them to market and develop, but they continue to make Wi-Fi chips.
Lucent/Agere was the original chipmaker for many of the first wave of OEM Wi-Fi products, such as Linksys and Apple’s gear. Broadcom was the chipmaker of choice for the first wave of 802.11g, so it’s ironic that they migth bring Agere into their fold, wireless products aside.
Light Reading notes that Agere has just a few product lines that Broadcom doesn’t already have entries in, such as hard drive chips and certain telecom products. [link via GigaOm]
Posted by Glennf at 5:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intel bows to manufacturer feedback, and drops plans to ever add Wi-Fi access point features to its Intel Express 915 and 925 chipsets: Frankly, we never saw the reason to add these features into a desktop PC with the combination of simple Internet sharing available within Windows XP and more robust options under Linux, and the cheap price of full-featured, stand-alone access points. There are a lot of reasons why a computer shouldn’t be an access point, and most of them have to do with the nature of the device: most computers aren’t on all the time, aren’t in the right position to offer access for a home or business, and don’t have the right kind of antennas.
Posted by Glennf at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
As expected, Intel announced today that its Centrino 802.11a/b/g chip will become available in September: The chip will come with updated software that includes a configuration wizard, updated troubleshooting, and automated security set up. The software also includes the most current version of Cisco’s extensions so the chips are compatible with Cisco access points.
The new chips will also support 802.11i.
Intel is far behind some others in the industry in introducing a combined 802.11g and 802.11a chip. Atheros built its first combined chip nearly two years ago. Still, Atheros regards Intel’s entrance into the market space as good news. “By moving Centrino to a/g, it will pump up the mass market in the U.S., which helps us,” said Sheung Li, a product line manager for Atheros. He figures that Intel will grow the market, spurring opportunity for others at the same time.
IDC expects that combined 802.11a/g will become the dominant Wi-Fi standard by 2006, with 802.11g hitting its peak in 2005. Intel’s entrance into the combined 802.11a/g market, especially in the notebook space, should help ease the transition away from 802.11g to 802.11a/g, said Ken Furer, research analyst with IDC.
For now, 802.11a has been largely viewed as technology for business users in the United States, Li said. But he expects Intel’s new chip to follow a similar story as when Intel began building support for faster Ethernet into its chips. “People perceived 100 (megabit) as the high end. Then Intel ships it and now you can’t buy 10 (megabit),” Li said.
He expects the added reliability of 802.11a to increase the types of applications that may be used on Wi-Fi networks. For example, at a recent Microsoft conference, a Microsoft executive touted its Windows media center, but recommended that users employ 802.11a networks instead of 802.11g networks because of the lowered chance of interference.
The upgraded software from Intel will also compete with software that other chip makers including Atheros also offer. Such add-ons can offer a needed boost for chipmakers. “The software provides a way to differentiate and it’s a higher margin business in a market where the price of chips is crashing down,” Furer said. As chips become commoditized, the software allows chipmakers to differentiate themselves, especially against the very low cost Taiwanese competitors, he said.
Posted by nancyg at 1:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom’s latest 802.11g system puts the whole megillah on a single chip: While we don’t highlight every chip announcement, this is another roadpost on the way to the inclusion of higher-speed Wi-Fi in any product that could benefit from it. A single chip is easier to integrate, reduces the overall cost of materials, and decreases power consumption.
Posted by Glennf at 6:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Marvell’s LiveAP can use the trickle of standby power from a computer to operate even when the computer itself is entirely off: The idea is that LiveAP can be embedded in devices that are on intermittently without losing the AP function. Today, you can turn a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer into an ad hoc or (in certain cases) infrastructure access point, but only while the system is fully powered and not crashed. Marvell, a chipmaker, sees the device in computers, gaming consoles, and media centers.
Posted by Glennf at 7:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom introduces shortcut for creating strong Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) keys without the fuss of memorizing long base-16 numbers: Broadcom’s new method of guiding home users to create a WPA encryption key without having any technical knowledge has the unwieldy name of SecureEZSetup. But the name is more complicated than the technology: a simple two-step wizard in which users choose two out of four personal questions to answer from which a full-length 16-byte WPA key is generated. The user can then answer the questions the same way on another computer or enter the hexadecimal key for non-EZ systems for compatibility.
 |  |  |
| New or additional setup | Choosing and answering questions | Resulting key |
The first time you set up a router with SecureEZSetup, the key is stored in the router’s configuration and in the local wireless adapter. The setup wizard allows you to save and print the information you entered, including the long hexadecimal key, for reference in configuring addition machines. The setup also assigns a unique SSID (network name) to the Wi-Fi gateway based on that gateway’s MAC address.
SecureEZSetup has some similarities with Buffalo Technology’s AOSS (AirStation OneTouch Secure System) which requires all Buffalo hardware to negotiate a lowest-common denominator encryption setting for the network. A Buffalo spokesperson said via email that Buffalo would support both systems, and allow their customers to choose whether to select AOSS or SecureEZSetup.
Jeff Abramowitz, senior director of marketing for wireless LAN technology, said that their customers, which integrate Broadcom chips into consumer and enterprise products, would start rolling out EZ into products as soon as in the next month, but more likely in upgrades destined for before the back-to-school period. He declined to say which companies initially plan support. Abramowitz said that the algorithm that drives the setup would be made available to incorporate into a standard, and that the front-end would be backward compatible for all of their shipping equipment.
Because the algorithm hasn’t been open to public scrutiny, the possibility remains that a cracker could discover a method to precompute in finite time all or most possible keys based on all reasonable length answers to the four questions in each combination. Because WPA-PSK (pre-shared key) can be forced to reveal known data encrypted with the key that a cracker can then take and work on elsewhere, it is open to a dictionary attack. If the number of precomputed keys is sufficiently small to store (on the order of megabytes, not tens of gigabytes), there’s the potential of a cracker using this algorithm to his or her advantage. I’m sure the encryption community will have more to say about this when their hashing algorithm hits the light of day.
Broadcom chose to deal with the application level of this problem because of the current obscurity in enabling encryption. “In most cases, I think the people that we’ve talked to they look at these screens and disable security,” Abramowitz said. The company ships 71 percent of all 802.11g products at the retail level, he said, making it possible for them to roll out this new initiative and see significant uptake.
Abramowitz also noted that the EZ system could piggyback in the future on an initiative that Microsoft is working on to allow secure exchange of keys and other material through a USB flash drive. In that system, the user could generate the key on one machine, write it to the drive, and then use that to load the key on other systems. Microsoft employed a floppy drive version of that idea to distribute keys on their home wireless routers first generation. Broadcom is concerned that any distribution method for the keys is secure. “If it’s not secure, then we’ve just blown half of the value,” he said.
SecureEZSetup defeats two common problems with Wi-Fi security: first, convincing users to enable it by avoiding a WEP-like screen. Even Apple’s relatively simple interface for entering a security key on their gateway requires the user to choose from one of four options, including the non-standards-named WPA Personal and WPA Enterprise (WPA-PSK and WPA over RADIUS, respectively).
Second, because Broadcom generates a long WPA key, they avoid the WPA key weakness which would allow a key that is comprised entirely of dictionary words and is 20 characters or fewer in length potentially to be broken through an offline attack. (No documented software exists that performs this crack, but it’s not an issue of when but if since the weakness is well documented.)
Broadcom is also introducing a new chipset that combines and reconfigures some elements of their radio and processing circuitry to reduce the cost of manufacture while extending range. The tradeoff for range is speed, but Abramowitz said that users are willing to exchange more distance for lower speed because the speed is typically far above the home broadband connection speed.
Abramowitz promised future developments of a similar nature to improve Wi-Fi’s usability by home users. This is “the first of what we expect will be several deliveries by us to advance state-of-the-art Wi-Fi connectivity.”
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Atheros says their single-chip 802.11g product is shipping volume now to manufacturers: The CMOS-based chip design reduces overall cost and power requirements. The chip will be used by D-Link in new products. Included with the chip is the entire portfolio of Atheros features, including extended range and its controversial Super G mode.
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Engim hired independent tester the Tolly Group to demonstrate how dramatically the performance of Wi-Fi networks decreases when a low performing device is within range: The study included eight different scenarios, each involving a different mix of client devices. In most cases, the average throughput of any user dropped to the lowest common denominator. So for example, nearby 802.11g clients would only connect as high as 3 Mbps but more often closer to 1 Mbps when an 802.11b client was set to connect to the access point at 1 Mbps.
While it’s no secret that this happens in Wi-Fi networks, Engim found that few enterprises were aware of it. “If you’re sharing a network among b and g users, they associate at different rates so that the 54 Mbps guy gets incredibly penalized,” said Scott Lindsay, vice president of marketing for Engim. “This is something IT managers didn’t know about.”
Engim says its chips can help solve the problem. Its chips can support multiple channels simultaneously. This Network World story offers a good overview of how the Engim chips work. Products with the chips can deliver three times as much capacity, but they can also allow users to separate traffic. For example, an OEM could write software that instructs the chip to place all voice calls onto one specific channel. The access point would know that a device associating with it is a voice over IP phone by its MAC address. Or, an OEM could write software that enables the access point to note the rate at which a client is connecting and if it’s slow, relegate that user to a channel that is reserved for slow traffic.
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An Israeli news source reports that Intel acquired a WLAN chipmaker Envara for $40 million: Envara designs but doesn’t make WLAN chips. No official from either company confirmed this report. If this is true, it’ll be interesting to find out what Envara has that Intel finds valuable. [link via Jeff]
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Broadcom is officially shipping its previously announced Afterburner technology which ups the net throughput by 40 percent; previous raw data rate promoted as 125 Mbps is dropped: It’s still the battle of the raw numbers, with Broadcom trying to top Atheros’s 108 Mbps Super G with Turbo combination, but only by using the term “125” without tacking on the “Mbps.” We’ll have to wait for Tim Higgins of Tom’s Networking to perform his usual exhaustive tests to tell us what the real throughput speeds are.
Broadcom reiterated its stand that Afterburner offers increased speed without sacrificing other nearby networks or devices, while pointing to work done by The Tolly Group that Broadcom says shows the Turbo mode in Atheros’s Super G severely degrades nearby 802.11g networks.
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Texas Instruments has a cellular handset platform that allows b/g or a/b/g integration with GSM, GPRS, CDMA, and EDGE: The two-chip solution relies on TI’s earlier cell chip work, with which this system can integrate and make use of some overlap in materials. TI expects to ship the chips mid-year. Several technological improvements allow reduced interference, lower battery usage, and a reduction in the number of overall chips in a complete Wi-Fi/cell-phone design.
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Broadcom announces that they’ve built in Cisco Compatible Extensions V2, a set of security add-ons to 802.11 networks: We at Wi-Fi Networking News remain dubious about proprietary add-ons, regardless of how widely and openly available, that circumvent industry bodies such as the Wi-Fi Alliance that have successfully prevented a fork in interoperability among devices in consumer, enterprise, logistics, and other spaces. With the 802.11 family through the Wi-Fi certification program remaining one of the most unified and successful long-term implementations of technology across an entire industry, anything appearing from one company outside of this process should be looked at long and hard.
Most chipmakers jumped on Cisco’s ship. They’re the biggest gorilla by far with their dominance in the enterprise and, with their purchase of Linksys, substantial minority ownership of the consumer space. Could Cisco’s extensions hurt? Unlikely. But they’re a chink in the wall. Cisco couldn’t get its way through committee, so it appealed to commerce. So far, it’s working.
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AMD may be about to introduce a hotspot program that offers to market hotspots for venues: The hotspots must be offered to end users for free and in return AMD will market the locations of the hotspots and offer special giveaways and discounts to end users. AMD hasn’t officially launched the program so a lot of details aren’t clear.
If this is true, it would appear to be an effort by AMD to put some marketing muscle behind its competition with Intel. While Intel leads the market in Wi-Fi chips built into laptops, AMD has a presence in the lower cost laptop market. During a recent trip to Best Buy, I found that most of the laptops in the lower price range had AMD processors. A hotspot program like the one described here would be AMD’s take on Intel’s program of placing signs in venues to mark hotspots except in AMD’s case, the hotspots will be free for end users.
Posted by nancyg at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intel’s moves in the Wi-Fi market may squeeze out other players in the market, including access point makers: Intel is moving toward building chips that can allow a laptop to serve as an AP. Some say if that becomes standard gear in laptops, it may threaten the vendors that make standalone access points. I have to agree with some of the comments in this story that while in some cases it is convenient for a laptop to serve as an AP, at other times it isn’t. I would prefer a standalone AP in my house because otherwise I’d have to keep my laptop running all the time. I suspect that laptops with built-in APs will appeal to a certain market but it won’t kill the market for standalone APs.
Intel could also give TiVo a run for its money as it develops chips for entertainment PCs. TiVo is apparently working to make its product cheaper and easier to use in anticipation for the competition.
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Leading 802.11g chipmaker Broadcom demoes GPRS/Wi-Fi, GRPS/EDGE/W-CDMA, and Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) technologies at the 3GSM World Congress next week: Broadcom is trying to extend its edge in data by offering chipsets that combine several standards and features into a single package. Sony Ericsson will release a PC Card with GPRS and Wi-Fi using Broadcom’s technology. And the GPRS/EDGE/W-CDMA chips will be used as the basis of new cards from several companies that will support the 1800 MHz 3G spectrum used in the U.S. for W-CDMA, such as the service AT&T Wireless may or may not offer this year.
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