Hasta La Gadget!

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)

Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner have agreed to let customers roam across Wi-Fi networks owned by the other two at no additional charge, the three companies said late Thursday.

For now, however, the agreement simply applies to the New York metropolitan area, which extends from areas of the Jersey Shore to the Hamptons. Each access point today displays authentication options for
all three WiFi services – Optimum WiFi, Time Warner Cable WiFi and
Xfinity WiFi – allowing customers to use their own provider’s sign-on
process to get online, the three companies said.

In a statement, John Bickham, Cablevision’s president of cable and communications, said he hoped the agreement was “one of many” to come.

A number of Apple customers groaned this week about their iPad’s erratic behavior when connecting to Wi-Fi, and Apple has issued a bulletin with a recommended solution.

Apple’s support forum contains several reports from users complaining about their iPad’s behavior with Wi-Fi networks, Macworld first noted. Some complain their iPad’s Wi-Fi signal is very weak, while others say they’re unable to join their network after waking iPads up from standby.

In a support bulletin, Apple on Monday acknowledged an issue specific to dual-band Wi-Fi routers — those that are compatible with both 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz spectrum bands.

“Under certain conditions, iPad may not automatically rejoin a known Wi-Fi network after restart or waking from sleep. This can occur with some third-party Wi-Fi routers that are dual-band capable when: Using the same network name for each network, [or] Using different security settings for each network,” Apple wrote.

Typically, dual-band routers transmit both the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands as one network with the same name and password. Apple recommends splitting the bands into two separate networks, naming them differently and making sure that both networks use the same type of security (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc).

If all else fails, Apple recommends resetting network settings in the iPad’s Settings app (Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings).

In the past, some Apple customers have complained about slow, unreliable Wi-Fi performance with Apple’s iPhone 3GS as well. Traditionally, Wi-Fi problems have been difficult to diagnose, as performance varies among different types of routers, and signal interference can be caused by a number of factors (such as a large number of Wi-Fi units in the area using the same channel, or turning on a microwave, among other causes). For a deep dive on the different types of Wi-Fi bands, see Glenn Fleishman’s article “Understanding Wi-Fi’s two spectrum bands.”

See Also:

• The Wi-Fi iPad’s Dealbreaker: No GPS
• Slow, Unreliable Wi-Fi Plaguing Some iPhone 3GS Units?
• AT&T Sees iPad as Wi-Fi Driven, Not a 3G Hog

Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

After several hours with an iPad today, the app I was most mesmerized with was Maps. One word: Wow.

When showing off the iPad to others, the Maps app consistently made people’s jaws drop (even more so than the Marvel Comics app, which I also find pretty magical), and rightly so. Never have I seen such a fast, intuitive piece of technology for geographical navigation. That’s exactly how mapping software should be: immediately responsive and easy to use to keep up with you on the road.

For that reason alone, to me the lack of GPS in the Wi-Fi iPad is a dealbreaker.

When writing Wired.com’s iPad buyer’s guide, I highlighted the 32-GB iPad 3G as our top pick, listing the inclusion of GPS as one of the key points. But now that I’ve spent a good deal of time with an iPad, I’m confident to say that that distinction alone should be enough to get you sold on the 3-G iPad, especially if you’re the type who travels or commutes, even if only occasionally.

You might think, “Just how would an iPad fit in as a navigator? It’s way bigger than most GPS devices.” That’s why it’d work. You’ll no longer have to pan all over the place and squint at a map to get a clear visualization of your route: It’s all nicely laid out in the map on the 9.7-inch display.

The fact it’s so easy to use is another big factor. Imagine going on a road trip and handing the iPad to a person in the passenger seat and asking him or her to look up directions. I’m willing to bet that even without ever using an iPad, any passenger will be able to launch the Maps app and look up directions within a few seconds.

The Street View mode is even more impressive. Tap the marker of a location and it immediately zooms in and shows a panoramic view (as pictured above), which you can rotate 360 degrees, giving you a visual of your destination.

Speed, ease of use and comprehensiveness: These elements add up to the convenience we’ve always wanted from a GPS device that no one has delivered until now. Today I bought the Wi-Fi iPad for the Wired office — but for me personally, I can wait for the 3-G iPad, which comes out late April.

See Also:

• The iPad Arrives: The Wait is Over (And Wasn’t Bad)
• Roundup: The First Reviews of Apple’s iPad
• Wired.com Buyer’s Guide: Choose the Right iPad

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired

The light from the lamps in your house could carry a wireless signal that could power internet connectivity at home, say a group of German researchers who say they have found a way to encode the signals into visible frequency.

Though it would provide much lower speeds than Wi-Fi signals, it can offer less interference and is likely to offer great protection from hackers, say the researchers.

Currently, most homes use radio-frequency based Wi-Fi signals for broadband service. But Wi-Fi has limited bandwidth, says the researchers, and it is difficult to get more radio spectrum for it. Visible frequency would be a good alternative, they say.

Flickering the lights can generate the signal in a room. The change won’t be visible to the human eye because the rate of modulation is millions of times faster than what we can see, say the researchers. And since, visible light can’t penetrate walls there will be no interference.

Since incandescent and fluorescent bulbs can’t flicker fast enough, LEDs would be the right choice, say the researchers.

Commercial LEDs have a bandwidth of only a few MHz. But Jelena Vučić, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, and her colleagues who have been working on the project have found a way to increase the bandwidth by filtering out all wavelengths but blue.

Using the visible wireless system they built, the team downloaded data at up to 230 megabits per second. The researchers will present their findings at a conference in San Diego later this month.

[via Inhabitat]

Photo: (slworking/Flickr)