Hasta La Gadget!

Wireless routers aren’t the sexiest of gadgets to come across on the CES showfloor, but Securifi’s doing its best with the Almond+. The all-white router, an update to last year’s OG Almond, still features a 2.8-inch touchscreen, but now supports the 802.11ac standard for high speeds over 5GHz, in addition to Zigbee and Z-Wave for home automated control. That latter bit is a recent addition to the Almond+’s UI interface, allowing users with compatible Zigbee or Z-Wave products to control lights around the house or even monitor and receive notifications (cloud-synced via a free iOS or Android app) when their door is being opened or closed. Around back the innocuously designed device sports one USB 2.0 and five for gigabit ethernet. At present, Securifi intends to launch the Almond+ on Kickstarter for $99 sometime within the next week, so look for it to debut there soon. While you wait, take a look out our gallery below, as well as video demo just after the break.

Continue reading Securfi Almond+ hands-on (video)

Filed under: Internet

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Securifi isn’t your average Kickstarter outfit. It already has one Almond wireless touchscreen router under its belt, currently sold at Amazon, and now it’s about to bid for crowdfunding to build a sequel: the Almond+. The new device will incorporate a 2.8-inch 320 x 240 touchscreen for PC-free setup, dual band 802.11ac for speeds of up to 1,167Mbps, plus an integrated Smart Home hub that works with the slightly esoteric Zigbee and Z-Wave protocols. In conjunction with the iOS and Android app, this would let you access regular home automation tasks from anywhere, including security alerts and heating and lighting control. We’ll see more of it when the project launches at Kickstarter, at which point it’ll have a $250,000 funding goal.

Continue reading Almond+ WiFi router coming to Kickstarter: touchscreen, 802.11ac, home automation

Filed under: Wireless, Networking

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It’s safe to say if you’re reading this post, you’re using a device with a wireless connection as the days of wired connections are slowly going off into the sunset. Sure, wired connections are more reliable, secure and faster than wireless, but if today’s rumor turns out to be true, we can be sure speed won’t be a deciding factor when deciding between wired and wireless connections.

According to sources familiar with Apple’s plans for their upcoming Macs, the company has made a deal with Broadcom to supply chipsets compatible with 802.11ac.

If you’re unfamiliar with 802.11ac, think 802.11n’s 450Mbps speeds with only a single antennae where the 802.11n requires three. If routers begin supporting 802.11ac, it’s possible speeds of 1.3Gbps can be achieved within a home network if the router is equipped with three antennas.

As of now, Broadcom is one of a handful of chip makers who are able to provide chipsets with 802.11ac support. Hopefully if this rumor turns out to be true, we can probably expect a wider adoption of 802.11ac, which means faster wireless speeds in the coming years.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPhone 5S Will Have Five Different Color Options And Two Display Sizes [Rumor], iPhone 6 Tested By Apple?,

Apple is planning to give the 802.11ac wireless networking standard a big boost in 2013, according to a new report from TheNextWeb. Sources tell the blog that Apple will partner with Broadcom to bring the next-gen Wi-Fi tech to new Macs. 802.11ac is the successor to 802.11n, but it has yet to make its way to many shipping notebooks.

802.11ac “Gigabit Wi-Fi” offers theoretical maximum networking speeds of roughly  three times those currently offered by 802.11n. The standard is still in Draft, which means that it hasn’t received final approval by the IEEE, and isn’t likely to until at least later in 2013. Still, Apple has shown itself willing to ship products using draft versions of wireless standards in the past, and it’s a fairly common practice among consumer device makers. Routers have also already been brought to market which offers 802.11ac networking speeds, although so far, Apple’s own AirPort devices don’t boast those capabilities.

TNW reports that the Wi-Fi chip being developed by Broadcom for inclusion in Macs is still in development, but that if all goes according to plan, they will make their way into new Macs shipping this year. As with Thunderbolt, it may take a little while for consumers to see the added value of the inclusion of 802.11ac as mobile devices, routers and other gadgets catch up. Ionically, 802.11ac support was rumored for inclusion in Apple’s AirPort base stations, Apple TV and even potentially mobile devices around the same time last year, but that never materialized. This new report suggests that in fact, notebooks could be where we see it pop up first among Apple’s hardware lineup.

Early experiences with WiFi 802.11ac will likely prove disappointing for those expecting a significant boost over existing 11n wireless, industry experts warn, with the soon-to-be-ratified standard taking a further generation before it lights up properly. “The new standard will be evolutionary, with two waves involved” Cisco’s Chris Spain tells Network Computing. ”Out of the gate, the increases in performance over 11n will not be tremendously impressive. The second wave – which will require a hardware refresh – gets far more interesting.”

Although initial suggestions around 802.11ac indicated throughput rates of up to 6.9Gbps, the initial products are more likely to top out at 1.3Gbps at most. “First-generation 802.11ac products will achieve up to 1.3 Gbps through the use of three spatial streams,” Aerohive Networks’ Andrew vonNagy explains, “80-MHz-wide channels (double the largest 40 MHz channel width with 802.11n), and use of better hardware components that allow higher levels of modulation and encoding (up to 256-QAM).”

In fact, it could be “another three years or so until 11ac becomes compelling” as a must-have upgrade to WiFi 11n systems, Spain suggests. Even then, rather than speed, it may be overall capacity that proves the biggest draw. All 802.11n hardware will have support for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, helping shift devices out of the congested 2.4GHz range.

“What’s not being talked about enough is that 11ac clients will free up more 2.4-GHz space for clients that can’t upgrade,” Spain says, “and that advanced features like multiuser MIMO will provide wireless performance that is more switch-like compared to the shared media nature of 11n.”

As Qualcomm explained to us back in February, when the 11ac ratification was still around a year away, co-existing 11ac and legacy WiFi networks will also introduce a hindrance on speed; the biggest advantages will of course be seen when the network is 11ac-only. Routers supporting the new standard but working with b/g/n hardware will use a “round robin” distribution method in that case, rapidly connecting and disconnecting with each client in turn; each connection will negotiate the fastest possible speeds supported by router and client.

In contrast, 11ac supports concurrent operations, with a resulting increase in throughput. Nonetheless, it’ll be some time – even with early hardware getting the jump on sales pre-ratification – before 11ac is the dominant wireless system, and perhaps longer still before we see the key benefits from its on-paper potential.

[via Slashdot]

Prepare to be underwhelmed by first-gen WiFi 802.11ac warn experts is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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