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Lockheed Martin has announced that it’s completed a critical design review for a system that enables submarine communication while below periscope depth. Part of the US Navy’s Communications at Speed and Depth Program, buoys are launched by the sub, which can then connect nearby to military networks or satellites. The 40-inch long buoys can either be launched from the sub itself, shuttling data back and forth via miles-long cables, or dropped from aircraft. If the latter, communications is established using an acoustic messaging system similar to SONAR. Now that the review is complete, the team will begin producing hardware with an eye toward delivering engineering design models early next year. PR after the break.

Continue reading Lockheed Martin, Navy team up to deploy communications buoys for submarines

Lockheed Martin, Navy team up to deploy communications buoys for submarines originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What do you get when you combine a gaming-centric NIC with a GPU? Truthfully, the world’s still trying to figure that out, but Bigfoot Networks and TLU (responsible for the PowerColor brand) are jonesing to see what exactly will happen here at Computex. The two have joined forces on Bigfoot’s first-ever integration effort — the heretofore unnamed network card / graphics card hybrid combines a Killer 2100 with an ATI Radeon HD 5000 series GPU, and the prototype board on hand here in Taipei boasted a pair of DVI ports, an HDMI output and a gigabit Ethernet jack. The company’s hoping that gamers will be eager to upgrade their GPU with one that also helps lower ping times and give them more control over which programs get priority when sharing bandwidth, and while pricing remains up in the air, the outfit’s CEO told us that buying the combo card would obviously be cheaper than buying each one on its own. If all goes well, the first PowerColor / Bigfoot Networks card will be out and about in a few months, which led us to pry a little deeper into the outfit’s plans.

We asked if it had any other integration tactics coming up, and they didn’t hesitate to mention that mainboards are next on the mishmash block. Convincing motherboard makers to swap out the tried-and-true NIC for one of Killer’s modules would obviously be a boon for a company that still describes itself as a “startup,” and it’s yet another avenue to get into a gamer’s home that wouldn’t traditionally buy a standalone network card. When we asked how long it would take for Killer cards to start showing up within gaming laptops, he seemed rather confident that it would happen in the not-too-distant future, and given their existing relationship with Alienware, we wouldn’t be shocked in the least to hear of the M15x and M17x nabbing it first. Furthermore, Bigfoot’s intently looking into getting its name on the wireless side sometime “next year,” essentially providing WiFi users the same ping lowering, network controlling tactics that it currently does over Ethernet. Finally, we were told that there’s nothing at all stopping the Killer 2100 from being integrated into more cards from more vendors, and if the right offer came along, you could definitely see a combo NIC / GPU with an NVIDIA core rather than ATI. Needless to say, the little-networking-company-that-could looks to be ramping things up in a big way, and while we never were much on buying standalone add-ins, we’re duly intrigued by these integrated solutions.

Continue reading Bigfoot Networks reveal GPU / NIC combo card, talks up motherboard integration and WiFi

Bigfoot Networks reveal GPU / NIC combo card, talks up motherboard integration and WiFi originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LED data transmission used to be all the rage — we fondly remember beaming Palm Pilot contacts via IrDA. Then we got omni-directional Bluetooth and building-penetrating WiFi, and put all that caveman stuff behind us. But now, scientists the world over are looking to bring back line-of-sight networking, and the latest demonstration has Chinese researchers streaming video to a laptop with naught but ceiling-mounted blue LEDs. The Chinese Academy of Sciences claims to have realized a 2Mbit per second internet connection that transmits data simply by modulating the flicker of the little diodes, and imperceptibly enough to have them serve as room lighting as well. Like Boston University before them, the Chinese scholars see short-range LED networks controlling smart appliances. It’s not quite the gigabit speed you’d get from laser diodes, but this way you’ll get more mileage out of those expensive new bulbs, eh?

Chinese scientists demonstrate 2Mbps internet connection over LED originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 20:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wi-Fi is about to lay claim to a new frequency band that could result in speeds at least 10 times faster than what’s currently available.

An agreement between the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance will let the Wi-Fi Alliance carve out specs and standards to support Wi-Fi operation in the 60-GHz frequency band in a bid to make Wi-Fi faster. By contrast, Wi-Fi today operates in the 2.4-GHz and 5- GHz bands.

“Today’s Wi-Fi speeds are measured in the low hundreds of megabits per second,” says Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance.”The 60-GHz band allows for significant boost in performance, so we are talking about speeds in the gigabits per second range.”

Specifically, the move to 60 GHz could allow for speeds in the range of 1 gigabits per second to 6 gbps, in contrast to today’s theoretical maximum of 150 Mbps for 802.11n.

“Wi-Fi in 60 GHz band could mean some compelling apps, such as those connecting your Blu-ray player to your TV or sharing uncompressed video in real time without any degradation,” says Figueroa.

With the proliferation of multimedia such as photos, home video and HD movies, consumers are looking for faster ways to transfer data that can also cut through the cable clutter. Users who are hooked on Lost through Hulu or can’t resist watching Lady Antebellum videos on YouTube currently have to hook up their computers to a TV through an HDMI cable.

Wi-Fi in the 60-GHz band could be the first step toward helping consumers go truly wireless, says Xavier Ortiz, an analyst at ABI Research. The drawback is that the higher frequency waves have much shorter range and won’t go through walls well.

“The 60 GHz is like a beam of light — you have to have line of sight — but you can get multi-gigabit point-to point networking speeds with it,” he says.

The agreement between the Wi-Fi alliance and the Wi-Gig standard also helps two different standards to come together. Earlier, the Wi-Gig alliance, which has been advocating the 60-GHz band, had to work independently to get chip makers and gadgets manufacturers to get on board with its technology.

“Now we are going to rally the industry around a compelling subset of features and go through a process of testing compatibility and interoperability,” says Figueroa.

Still the new Wi-Fi frequency will have to find a way to work with other standards including Wireless HD and Zigbee to free consumers from being tethered to their devices. Chip makers such as SiBeam have said they will try to find a way to make the Wi-Fi and WiGig chips compatible with Wireless HD.

Figueroa estimates routers and other gadgets that have dual-band or tri-band capability, that is the ability to switch between 2.4 Ghz or 5 GHz and the 60-GHz band, will be available in about two years.

See Also:

• WiGig Tempts With High-Speed Wireless Data Transfer
• Major Cable Providers To Share Wi-Fi Networks
• Blazingly Fast Wireless HD Hits the Mainstream

Photo: (nicolasnova/Flickr)

You’d better have a backup plan, one that includes every computer on your network. To help you out, Plextor is announcing the PX-NAS2, its first consumer NAS drive. The PX-NAS2 is a two-bay network-attached storage (NAS) device that can help you store data and share it. The drive is Windows and Macintosh compatible. It will also keep your confidential files private, while still letting you share other files with the computers on your network.

An included utility detects any PX-NAS2 attached to your network and, after only a little configuration, starts to share, download, and transfer files. You can use it to upload photos and videos to Flickr, YouTube, and other sites. You’ll also get Memeo, an automatic backup program, as part of the bundle.

The PX-NAS2 comes in three configurations: a two-bay NAS with no hard disks installed lists for $225, one with two 500GB disks goes for $355, and one with two 1TB disks lists for $565. All three versions will be available this month.