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Gefen: HDMI over UWB; Belkin: USB over 802.11n

By Glenn Fleishman

Gefen's first foray into ultrawideband didn't pan out: Gefen (along with Belkin) preannounced UWB-based cable-free USB hubs using Freescale chips way way back in Jan. 2006. Gefen abandoned the attempt entirely, but comes back to market with UWB-based HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) extenders. HDMI couples audio and video in a single cable, and can wrap encryption (HDCP) on top of that if required by content owners. They're using Tzero chips to extend HDMI over UWB. It'll ship in June for $750 for a pair.

Belkin will ship a USB-over-802.11n hub in June for $130: This 802.11n-based USB extender requires host software for Windows. It has five ports. Mac software is due in August.

Belkin, by the way, has been promising its revised UWB Wireless USB four-port hub with host dongle setup since last year, when Popular Science gave it a best product award. The last update says the product would ship Jan. 12, which did not happen.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:01 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: 802.11n, UWB, Video | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Raymond Chander's Vista (The Big Wi-Fi Sleep)

By Glenn Fleishman

Windows Vista has a napping problem: I've been reading about an issue regarding low-power and brief sleep modes in "802.11" and "Wi-Fi" (used sometimes inaccurately as interchangeable commodities) for days now to understand what Microsoft did right or wrong in how they configured Vista to save battery power when using Wi-Fi. Ars Technica, as usual, has the right combination of technical detail and comprehensibility.

The story started as if Vista would "drain" batteries, which made little sense. Reading the original coverage in TechWeb and a Microsoft blog post on the matter didn't enlighten me. Why would any Vista setting use more power than XP SP2? Surely, XP SP2 has an optimized, but inferior set of options for Wi-Fi, because Vista is reported to offer better control over networking and wireless usage. (The Microsoft blog post has been deleted, by the way, with no placeholder. The TechWeb story has quotes from the blog.)

The discussion of "802.11 power save" made things even murkier. The Wi-Fi Alliance approved a test to certify part of 802.11e known as WMM (Wireless Multimedia). WMM as a whole deals with prioritizing packets in different queues so that voice packets can be given priority over ordinary data, and streaming data packets likewise. These queues are only part of the answer--ask Ruckus Wireless and others about that--but within 802.11e, there's an option for reducing power usage through cleverer brief naps while a transceiver isn't active. The alliance calls this WMM Power Save, and just a few devices currently carry that certification standard. (T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service offers a D-Link router with WMM Power Save for this reason to preserve battery life on its UMA [unlicensed mobile access] handsets that work over Wi-Fi or cellular networks for calls.)

These tiny naps can add up. By catching a few milliseconds here and there, the Wi-Fi Alliance has estimated a 15 to 40 percent improvement in battery life over regular Wi-Fi. This will be significant in phones, games, and cameras where every electron counts.

So what's "802.11 power save"? Ars Technica notes that a power save mode appears in 802.11 specifications, and that different vendors have implemented this in different ways. Vista's default setting for its last version before the product was actually installed on hard drives heading to corporate customers was "Medium Power," which made adapters use this older, uncertified, non-interoperable mode. Because adapters and access points from different manufacturers--perhaps just different models--handle this power save feature differently, "Medium Power" would find APs sending packets when adapters were sleeping.

In the release to manufacture (RTM) version of Vista actually pushed out the door, the setting was change to "Maximum Performance," which disables sleep, and provides the most compatibility. It's unclear whether that setting would disable WMM Power Save--that might be implemented at a lower layer of the stack and only work with compatible devices.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:01 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Software, Video | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Ruckus Gets Countrified

By Glenn Fleishman

I'm trying to make sense of Ruckus's rural strategy for its IPTV products: The company uses multiple-antenna technology combined with proprietary streaming algorithms to provide voice, video, and data (802.11b/g compatible) across a home. The rural angle is intriguing, because rural telephone companies want to bring newer services (and higher per-customer revenue for the same wired infrastructure), but they can't afford to rewire homes to handle the network for multimedia and VoIP traversing a house.

Enter Ruckus. They say that because their system can carry streaming video and deliver other services, they're the perfect complement for rural telcos. The telco still does a truck roll, but Ruckus claims its MediaFlex system of gateways and adapters takes under an hour to install, and future additions can avoid a truck roll.

An hour is a pretty nice bar to set to keep costs low, and compares favorably to other home installs. A DirecTV installation at my house required two installers and about an hour to mount a satellite antenna, set up the receiver, and train us on the system. Obviously, the satellite industry considers an hour a profitable installation when factoring in lifetime customer value.

By contrast, in a DSL textbook I read nearly a decade ago, new telco services weren't considered profitable by large phone companies until they reached the point when only five percent required truck rolls. It took DSL and cable years to reach the point where most installs involve just sending a modem out. This has changed completely again with triple-play services, as Ruckus notes.

The latest press release from Ruckus notes 16 more rural telcos in addition to several they'd already signed.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:04 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Home, MIMO, Rural, Video | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks