Wi-Fi Direct Gets Real With Product Certification 78
CWmike writes "Wi-Fi Direct officially became a concrete technology today, with several new laptop components certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. That threshold was reached before most people even understand what Wi-Fi Direct is, reports Matt Hamblen. Wi-Fi Direct is a new technology designed to allow peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections between devices like smartphones and cameras without a traditional Wi-Fi network or the need for Wi-Fi access points. This means that a camera with Wi-Fi Direct installed could communicate via Wi-Fi to a digital picture frame or printer, uploading picture data over the same range of existing Wi-Fi, about 200 yards at speeds of up to 250Mbit/sec, said Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa. 'Imagine if two people were on a train and wanted to play a game in real time on their separate handhelds but had no cellular or Wi-Fi hot spot. They still could play with Wi-Fi Direct,' he said."
Re:Bluetooth is gone eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Bluetooth 3.0 uses WiFi as the underlying carrier technology.
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe there's more to Wi-Fi Direct than what Ad Hoc networking offers - I really don't know..
So you could take a minute to post the fact you are uninformed to slashdot, or you could have spent that same minute informing yourself...
From the FAQ linked in the article...
Is this the same as Ad Hoc mode?
No. Ad Hoc, or IBSS, mode is a legacy protocol for Wi-Fi devices, and Wi-Fi Direct is a new innovation. Wi-Fi Direct brings important security features, ease of setup, and higher performance that is not currently available in Ad Hoc mode. With Wi-Fi Direct, a device can maintain a simultaneous connection to an infrastructure network – this isn’t possible with Ad Hoc.
Re:How is this different than an ad-hoc wireless L (Score:4, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, Wi-Fi Direct is ad-hoc mode Wi-Fi device with a built-in Wi-Fi Protected Access setup daemon, optional access point software (e.g., routing to other networks) and an as-yet undefined service discovery mechanism (e.g., UPnP, Bonjour). Basically, they are writing a standard which ties together several existing standards and best practices. This sort of meta-standard is quite common.
One example they give is a picture frame, which offers only the required ad-hoc mode Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Protected Access daemon, and a simple service for file upload. The user would connect to it, upload pictures, and then disconnect. Nothing else would be offered by the frame, but the user would not need to do any manual setup or buy any additional devices.
A more complicated example is a cell phone which offers tethering. In addition to the required ad-hoc mode Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Protected Access daemon, has full blown bridging/routing and service discovery daemons built-in. The user would expect to treat this device more like an infrastructure mode network in a single package; perhaps some setup would be required on the Wi-Fi Direct device, but virtually no additional setup would be required on each connected device.
So basically they are just making a standard, the implementation of which requires doing all of the things we have done manually for our own networks. This is just one step further in simplifying network setup, but not any kind of new revolution.
Re:Bluetooth is gone eh? (Score:3, Informative)
Only when high speed data is needed, like for file transfers, and only for the radio layer. The protocol is still very much bluetooth.
And bluetooth 4.0 introduced a low power spec, that should allow a compatible device to function for quite some time from a coin style battery (or perhaps even smaller).
Re:How is this different than an ad-hoc wireless L (Score:1, Informative)
Ad-hoc/IBSS was never widely adopted by consumers, and is a very connection-centric technology. You create ad-hoc profiles on each participating machine, activate the network, and that's it. Security and services are up to the user- and generally the ability to create ad-hoc networks is relegated to the "advanced" section of most WiFi UIs. WiFi Direct uses WPS so average-Joe users can create and join secure "ad-hoc" networks without really knowing anything about the underlying technologies. It also provides the ability for devices to discover each other based on specific services (device features, like printer, projector, etc) instead of relying on a static SSID or credentials set.
IBSS also has some timing requirements that rule out the possibility of using the host radio for anything other than the IBSS network. WiFi Direct allows for radio multi-purposing, opening up possibilities for wireless devices that I don't want to get into right now.
So it's a similar idea to traditional ad-hoc, but it's much more geared toward novice users and/or WiFi-capable devices with limited (or no) WiFi user interface, and has built-in security without compromising the user experience. To be honest the underlying implementation of WiFi Direct is fantastically complex. It's WAY more advanced than ad-hoc/IBSS... but the whole point of it is to make WiFi networking SEEM simple, so in that regard I feel it's a success.
Bluetooth passes network timing natively. (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder how long it will actually take to phase out bluetooth. I mean, that tech has been around forever and never really caught on outside of phones.
Bluetooth passes the 8KHz network timing natively, by timing its frame rate to the network clock and having built-in provisions for picking a good clocking master. This is very handy for cellphone peripherals because it makes them cheap: The phone provides an accurate and (if appropriate) network-synchronized clock to the the A/D converters in microphones, which only have to synchronize to the frame rate from the phone's bluetooth signal rather than have a stratum-III or better clock built in.
With WiFI any solutions to timing-transfer issues (other than those of the link itself) are add-on kludges.
Re:So.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bluetooth is gone eh? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Bluetooth 3.0 uses IEEE802.11, not Wi-Fi, as the underlying carrier technology. Wi-Fi is a superset of 802.11 features. Wi-Fi brings broad interoperability, higher level functionality and mandated conformance to established standards. BT 3.0 uses 802.11 as an Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) layer, has a fixed signaling rate of 24Mbps, and does the "networking" using the BT radio and BT protocols, not Wi-Fi. It is not necessary for a 802.11 radio that is set up to run in BT3.0 mode to be compatible with a standard Wi-Fi access point, as BT3.0 is really supposed to be used to allow higher speed data transfer (about 8x) between two BT3.0-enabled devices, like a cameraphone and a notepad. Wi-Fi Direct is direct competition to BT 3.0, but does it more simply with the one radio, technology and protocol rather than two radios and a mix of protocols that are very different and more costly.
As some of you might remember from way back in 2005, originally the high-speed AMP was going to be Ultrawide Band (UWB), but the BTSIG took a bet on the WiMedia Alliance's MB-OFDM quasi-UWB technology and lost when WiMedia folded its tent in early 2009, after probably a dozen manufacturers had failed to get MB-OFDM silicon to work as promoted.
Bluetooth is not gone, in fact BT Classic (the 2.1 stuff) is in the majority of all cellular handsets sold in the world today, and I think each week something like 20 million BT chips are shipped in product, 90++% of that in cellular handsets and headsets. However, the actual usage of BT is pretty low since most people don't really seem to take to headsets, or if they do use a headset, it's often wired since that eliminates the need to charge two batteries. Like I saw somewhere else, BT seems like the IRDA of the 21st Century, ubiquitous yet little used
That having been said, Since 2004 or so I've been using BT headsets (5-6 models now), multiple BT-enabled phones, even a BT-enabled PDA (remember the old Sony Clie), and am generally satisfied by the convenience and performance. Pairing has gotten way better with 2.1, my phone (BB) only forgets about my headset (Jabra) every second week or three, requiring a repairing effort. But I'm an engineer, and have some tolerance for touchy gadgetry... And no, I'm not a member of either the BTSIG or the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
Is this the same as Ad Hoc mode?
"No." (actually, it's damn close, so close that anyone who knows both will assume they are the same.
"Ad Hoc, or IBSS, mode is a legacy protocol for Wi-Fi devices, and Wi-Fi Direct is a new innovation." (Adhoc is old, this is new! That's the difference! Imbecile!)
"Wi-Fi Direct brings important security features, ease of setup, and higher performance that is not currently available in Ad Hoc mode." (we took adhoc mode, formalised the out-of-spec "adhoc can use more than 11MBps" stuff that manufacturers have been doing for YEARS - a five year old card of mine does 54Mbps adhoc), officially added something like WPA to it (which you could always do anyway), and made it so that it's easier to connect that just... wow... telling it to connect to a network with a particular name by double-clicking on a list)
"With Wi-Fi Direct, a device can maintain a simultaneous connection to an infrastructure network - this isn't possible with Ad Hoc." (Hooray! Something new! But this is also nothing more than either timeslicing between two networks, one of which happens to be adhoc, or having a radio(s) capable of tuning to two networks simultaneously).
In shot, Wi-Fi Direct is decent ad-hoc, ten years too late, using stuff that people have been putting into drivers for years.