Cebit08’s new Homeplug devices

There are dozens of companies showing off Ethernet-over-mains devices at Cebit08, but here are the best bits:

Intellon’s prototype "homeplug in a wall socket" is an extremely neat design which can be used instead of regular wall sockets to network a house.

An Intellon spokesperson, who didn’t want to be named, said that Wifi dead-spots and poor Wifi performance for video meant there was a demand for new homes to use Homeplug. The company is already in talks with an unnamed house builder in the UK to get them into new builds.

Sadly, you can’t retrofit your house with these cool wall sockets unless you’re a certified electrician - otherwise you’ll invalidate your home insurance.

The Intellon spokesperson rubbished the idea that powerline technology transmits wirelessly from floor to floor. Due to the strict power emissions the EU puts on all consumer electronics, Homeplugs can only talk to each other wirelessly if they are up to 3cm apart, but no more.

Convergence is the Homeplug buzzword of choice this year, since a raft of audio and video streamers, as well as set top boxes, are getting Homeplug built into them. More exciting than that was Gigafast’s Homeplug that hosts a USB port. It lets a computer in another room use the USB port as if it were built into the machine. Here it is plugged into a USB rocket launcher:

Gigafast’s Homeplug-enabled security camera could really kick Wifi cameras into touch, especially when combined with its video decoding box the other end, plugged directly into a PC.

For now, however, none of Gigafast's products will be on sale in the UK.

Nearly every manufacturer is showing off a “Y-cable”, which combines a power supply and Homeplug into one box. An Ethernet and a power cable comes out of the transformer, so a wide range of existing devices don’t have to be modified to use Homeplug. The only downside to this technology is the high cost of a Y-cable and that they can only provide up to 30W power output, since if you go higher the signal-to-noise ratio becomes too low for Homeplug to operate.

Posted by Emil Larsen on March 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

One powerline to rule them all

Devolo, the largest Homeplug seller with 2.5million out of the total 12million sold, will give the Homeplug Alliance a big boost in the coming months by using Intellon chips only and dropping Intellon's competitor, DS2, altogether.

Netgear has also backtracked from using DS2-only chips in its high end consumer range by releasing a 200mbit/sec Homeplug AV device called the XAV101.

Intellon's dominance could make buying powerline brands that use Panasonic or DS2 chips a gamble, since each is incompatible with the next.

Devolo is demonstrating the next speed hike, 400mbit/sec Homeplug prototypes, at Cebit08. In reality, file transfer rates (TCP) of 180mbit/sec are achieved in good conditions. The plugs use a low frequency for the first 100mbit/sec (this frequency is compatible with older AV Homeplugs) and add a new, higher frequency for the remaining 80mbit/sec.

Backwards-compatibility is a move in the right direction because Homeplug AV (200mbit/sec) devices are not compatible with older 14 and 85mbit/sec plugs, which was a blow for early adopters.

Devolo says 400mbit/sec products will arrive in a year's time at the earliest.

Posted by Emil Larsen on March 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Free IP switchboard for Windows

A new Windows-based software switchboard is easier to use than competing Linux-based PBXs, owner 3CX says.

The change to software PBXs reduces cost and improves functionality by integrating Voip services side-by-side with the regular BT phone line. A free package called Asterisk has taken pole position, but it's primarily Linux only whereas 3CX's Sip-compatible software can be installed on all major Windows operating systems, including Windows XP.

3CX says being Windows based is a big benefit because the setup is a breeze compared with Asterisk, its graphical interface is a doddle to use and it integrates well with Windows networks and applications.

There's a free version anyone can have a go with, but it limits you to eight simultaneous calls across your network. The full version is aimed at small to mid-sized companies with 10-500 extensions.

The cheapest version, called Small Business, costs £270 for the software – but you'll have to buy the PBX hardware and phone lines at an additional cost.

Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX, told me the big advantage of his product is that most other systems don't have a Windows client – a utility that functions like Skype in essence, allowing you to go anywhere in the world with access to the internet and have full access to your office telephone number, answer-phone and all the other gubbins that you usually get at your office desk.

And that would make working from home an absolute breeze.

Posted by Emil Larsen on December 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Divx Connected comes late to the party

Divx is to license software to media streamers that plug into your TV, which will let you access videos, photos and music files stored on your PC.

The software, called Divx Connected, will also give TVs access to the internet. Numerous plug-ins will allow utilities like Google Earth and internet radio stations to be accessed, although there will be no browser for the foreseeable future.

Divx founder, Jerome Rota, said: "There're just two chips inside, one to decode and one to do networking, so the cost of the box has the ability to go very low."

Rota hopes Connected boxes will eventually just be a dongle you can plug straight into your TV and he said Divx-badged Nas drives would be a reality in the future too.

Until 2008, D-Link has exclusive rights to software, starting with its DSM-330 box, which will cost £129.99. It's 1080p compatible and D-link has included support for WMV, WMA, various audio formats as well as the Divx Connected bare minimum: Divx video and picture support.

Despite being uPnP, which is one of the flakiest standards I've had the displeasure of using, the DSM-330 won't connect to Nas drives via the router. As such, a PC must always be on even for it to access the internet. This is because the PC renders the interface in OpenGL before transmitting the content onwards, a process that requires 4-6Mbits/sec bandwidth and on the edge of what 802.11g (included) can achieve in a typical household.

Divx's codec, an mpeg4 derivative, remains one of the most popular formats used to trade films illegally on the internet. Legitimate content delivery remains a big problem in Europe, admitted Rota, since copyrights for shows must be negotiated in each state, which isn't a problem in the USA.

The company has launched some legitimate download services in France and its Stage6 website (an alternative to YouTube we've previously inspected) for home-made videos will be available through Connected. Divx representatives refused to comment on the large volume of copyrighted shows on its website, but revealed Stage6 is being made into a separate company.

Ultimately I feel there are three major problems with Divx Connected:

Firstly there's not very much legitimate content - no access to 4oD, BBC iPlayer, Sky online etc.

Secondly, leaving your PC turned on isn't a step forwards. You could do streaming the old fashioned way: with a very long S-video or HDMI cable.

Finally, streaming from a PC is nothing new - Linksys has been doing the same thing with its Kiss players for a while.

But the interface is the slickest we've seen and it would be foolish to write Divx off. After all, the company's presence on DVD players is impressive.

After the Connected presentation, I asked Rota if there will ever be collaboration between Microsoft and Divx on the Xbox360, since the 360 isn't the media streaming champ everyone had hoped for. Rota said he was dismayed that Microsoft hadn't negotiated with Divx about support, but we suspect Microsoft is trying to keep costs down.

Posted by Emil Larsen on October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wannabe mobile WUSB competes with next-generation Bluetooth

Plans for a version 1.1 of the Wireless USB specification are almost an admission that the current version is not yet ready for mobile use. This is far from saying that it is pointless: the dongle adapters and  WUSB hubs currently available are basically cable replacements for fixed devices such as PCs and peripherals such as printers in which power consumption is not an issue.

Sales in the US, where they have been available for months, indicate that people have quickly realised the potential of a technology that can get rid of the mass of wires around desktops and offer more choice in where peripherals can be placed in a room.

For most of these mundane tasks bandwidth is not an issue either, though Alereon showed a notebook extending its display through a WUSB link. If you click on picture above  to enlarge it you can just see Alereon's WUSB card sticking out of the notebook's PC Card slot. In front of the monitor to the left is a Displaylink USB video adapter and a four-port WUSB hub with the lid off. The box with an aerial to the right of them combines the two into a single prototype wireless display extender. Just in front of that is a prototype Samsung WUSB camera docking station.

Pictured right are Alereon WUSB adapters in CF Card, Mini PCI, USB dongle, Express Card and PC Card formats. But for mobile devices like cameras and smartphones to exchange long files, WUSB will have to be very frugal indeed in its use of power.

Consumption issues are complex because WUSB tends to be used in bursts – it is not good, at least at this stage, at multimedia streaming. If it sends a movie it will either dump the whole thing over at once, or in large dollops, depending on the cache available in the target device.

Philips spin-off NXP yesterday announced a new Certified WUSB chip, the ISP 3582, which uses less than 10 microwatts in sleep mode and 600 milliwatts transmit power (oddly, slightly more power is used to receive files). Clearly a lot depends on how long it spends sleeping.

Optimising this is part of the aim of Version 1.1 development, and the thrust is to put the onus of power management on the host machine, in which consumption is less likely to be an issue. (Confusingly, the WUSB people use the word 'device' to mean anything linked to the host, as if that is itself not a device. Perhaps they think the more sensible word client smacks too much of client-server set-ups).

Version 1.1 will enable the host and client to establish time slots when they can communicate if necessary, so they do not have to be handshaking all the time.

Its adoption of Near Field Communication to pair devices follows the example of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. This is also adopting ultrawideband (UWB) links, which underlie WUSB, for fast transfers; as I wrote earlier this year, the idea is to use Bluetooth for device discovery and signalling, and call up UWB when a fat data pipe is needed.

For many mobile applications this will put it into competition with WUSB. Jason Ellis, business-development director of Staccato Communications, which like many companies in this field develops products for both technologies, says that as things stand Bluetooth with UWB would probably be more efficient than WUSB. But this might change as the standard is tweaked and the chips are more highly miniaturised.

David Brenner, business-development director of communications software specialist Stonestreet One, said Bluetooth was low-cost and it would be relatively simple to support both technologies on one device. "Some product lines are already strongly associated with Bluetooth and they are likely to continue to use it."

Replacing wires with wireless links is not always straightforward. An obvious use for WUSB is to get rid of the connecting wires in 5.1 and 7.1 speaker systems. David Sroka, NXP strategic marketing manager, said he knew companies that were developing ways to do this but they have get round the problem of wireless latency. "They have to get the timing right to ensure that the sound reaches each speaker at the right time.

Posted by Clive Akass on October 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beware fried kid's brains as mobile operators target the home

The International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells was remarkable, perhaps unique, yesterday in highlighting the problems of the technology it was discussing as much or even more than the advantages.

The advantages to operators, outlined in our story today, are clear; the advantages to subscribers are less so. They will enjoy better-quality in-house calls but operators are hoping they will also download music and movies. And no-one at the conference, to my mind, gave a compelling case why people would pay mobile operators to do this when they can do it faster for free using Wifi or one of the emerging short-range technologies. (There's a lot on those in the next edition of PCW magazine and we'll post it online soon).

Essentially, the mobile operators will be hiring out clean spectrum for home use, which will become important if Wifi links become intolerably congested. But even in this femtocells are not unique: in Europe DECT and its faster stablemate Cat-iq use uncluttered 1.9GHz frequencies and they are beginning to be used for web calls.

This is not to say the femtocell idea should be written off. It manages power consumption much more elegantly and efficently than Wifi, according to Will Franks, founder and chief technology officer of UK start-up Ubiquisys, which makes Femtocell systems.

The femtocell base station negotiates with each handset within range to decide the minimum power it needs to communicate with them. "It sets the levels so that the signal strength is the same for each handset, whatever its range, so that one does not take precedence."

Franks claimed: "I can barely reach across my house using a 100milliwatt Wifi signal - but I can get a good Femtocell connection using just 1mw."

He was citing radiated power, not battery drain. But because mobile phones will operate at lower power indoors, callers will get 50 percent more talk time than they would outside.

A view aired repeatedly at the conference was that people would resist having a base station in their homes because of health fears, particularly following the Panorama Wifi radiation scare.

Peter Jarich, wireless research director at Current Analysis, who used the above cartoon (top left) in an amusing presentation, pointed out that the programme had been much debunked but "it makes no difference if the danger is perceived to be real."

Another potential problem is what was called the "bus queue effect". If 20 people standing in a queue all start using their mobile phones, the machines could spend so much time negotiating with a nearby femtocell that refuses their calls, that they could end up not getting through on the macro network.

On one usage model, which will not be implemented in Europe, femtocells could put through public as well as home calls – potentially eliminating the need for neighbourhood base stations.

Louis Samuel, vice president and chief technology office for Alcatel in Europe, insists that his company has solved all the major problems surrounding femtocells – though he does expect teething problems in early implementations.

He would not name UK operators planning imminent rollouts. The London conference included representatives from Orange, Telefonica 02, T-Mobile International, Carphone Warehouse, Do Co Mo Europe, and Vodaphone NL.

One chart (above left), shown by Motorola's Eric Dowek, showed what they are worried about. It shows the anticipated affect of voice-over-IP on the revenues of fixed and mobile operators.

Posted by Clive Akass on July 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Magnifying glass Wi-Fi technology

Wi-Fi is an extremely hot potato at the moment; there's a lot of debate on the health aspect of wireless comms, but not enough debate on whether wireless connections are the best 'main' way to distribute data.

Once you sit in the vicinity of more than three different Wi-Fi networks, there becomes serious congestion – resulting in slow, dodgy connections.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a consistent 5Mbits/sec video stream beaming across a 5m space while contending with 20 other Wi-Fi networks at The Wireless Event 2007.

Most other networks crawled along, but the Ruckus stand achieved excellent data rates. Scott Reeves, technical director for Ruckus, told me his technology guaranteed no more than 1 packet lost per hour for a 5mbit/stream – an astonishing feat although he didn't say what distance and permittivity of material that was over.

Ruckus' Beam Flex products "reduce the noise that comes into the system and focuse the power through the antenna combination," he said.

This means if there are any health risks and you stand in the way of a focused beam, then it could be even more dangerous – it's like an ant walking underneath a magnifying glass in the sun.

Ruckus' products focus the beam by using a six-antenna array resulting in 63 usable combinations. Each combination focuses the power in a different direction.

The box calculates the direction on the fly, so if you move about the signal follows you; this was demonstrated by six LEDs, one attached to each antenna, which followed the receiver about.

This technique can be a sensible option if the focused power is lowered, reducing contention further and any possible health concerns.

Netgear has already licensed the technology for its 802.11g Rangemax product (hence the LEDs). These antenna arrays can also be used for receivers, however they aren't in retail, and will only be used by IPTV providers.

Posted by Emil Larsen on May 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Speedy Wifi depends on hogging the airwaves

We are grateful to our colleagues at the Inquirer for the revelations by Doctor Albert Yeh, vice president of  equipment maker Ovislink, about the true throughput of Wifi installations, as opposed to the rated speed. Most equipment makers admit that you never get anything like the rated speed but they rarely stick the figures up in Powerpoints.

For the record, Yeh gave these figures for the various flavours of Wifi (true/rated speed ):

• 11a 23/54Mbits/sec
• 11b 4/11Mbits/sec
• 11g 20/54Mbits/sec
• Turbo g 30/125 Mbits/sec
• Mimo g 33/125Mbits/sec
• draft 11n 120/300Mbits/sec

But is that last figure all that it seems? It depends on channel bonding - that is, grabbing two Wifi channels instead of one. Polite installations will switch this off automatically in the 2.4GHz band, where there are only three non-overlapping channels, if  other Wifi network are within range - which will be nearly always in cities. This would instantly cut the throughput to 60Mbits/sec.

Some 11n boxes seem to leave it up to users to switch off channel bonding, encouraging them to hog bandwidth. In the 5GHz band there are more channels available, but it requires a second radio and it is not clear how many products will support it.

We have yet to see how effective smart Mimo aerials will be in minimising contention and maximising throughput in crowded city airwaves. Until we do, that even that 60Mbits/sec should be taken with with a very large pinch of salt.

Posted by Clive Akass on May 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Zyxel wifi client utility falls prey to 'Illegal DLL relocation' XP bug

Here at PCW we're in the process of reviewing a Zyxel draft-N wireless router and Cardbus (NWD-170N) adapter, but despite having no problems with the router have been stymied when trying to install the client utility for the Cardbus adapter in Windows XP. An odd error message pops up to say :

The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Windows\System32\Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.

It turns out this is a recent known problem that can appear after installing a critical security update from Microsoft. Go to the MS Knowledge Base and download the hotfix, and all will be well. Several other apps are reportedly affected, so if you've seen this error the hotfix should help you out. It worked fine for us.

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 7, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wifi risk doesn't quite square

The papers this weekend have been full of stories about calls for an investigation into whether Wifi can damage health, particularly of children. The scare, along the lines of 'mobile phones fry your brains', was started by the lead story in the Independent on Sunday the weekend before last.

This lengthy piece failed to mention the inverse square law, which states that radiated energy drops off with the square of the distance from the source, meaning that a transmitter held against your head is potentially far more dangerous than one a few feet away. Nor did it mention that we have managed to survive despite bathing constantly in a sea of natural radiation.

The story did give the increasingly tabloidy Indy a chance to produce another of its lurid Mail-style scare-of-the-day headlines. The paper had a point, but the views of experts on the subject have been generally more measured. There is no evidence, apart from a few questionable anecdotes, that Wifi poses a significant danger. There is, however, good reason to check out the health risks just in case.

Posted by Clive Akass on April 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Networked PVRs deemed illegal

A US court has ruled the remote use of personal video recorders (PVR) is illegal, according to SiliconValley.com.

The implications are that you can't store your recorded TV footage at one address and watch it at another.

The case was brought to court by major film studios including 20th Century Fox and Time Warner against a New York cable company, called Cablevision Systems, for letting users record TV shows onto a PVR, stored on a Cablevision server.

The idea was to save the cable company a pile of cash in hardware costs. Instead of recording, pausing and rewinding TV in every customer's home, Cablevision could do all that on a big, networked PVR - so no more unit and maintenance costs on the PVRs for its 3 million subscribers.

A networked PVR could make cable TV cheaper, certainly giving poorer viewers PVR capability. In my humble opinion, it's another case of big media companies being terrified of progressive technology, and being short sighted over the revenues that might arise.

"We are disappointed by the judge's decision, and continue to believe that remote-storage DVRs are consistent with copyright law and offer compelling benefits for consumers - including lower costs and broader availability of this popular technology," said a spokesperson for Cablevision.

Posted by Emil Larsen on March 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Heidi and her avatars take on the giants of instant messaging

You might think that starting up yet another Instant Messenger service is a mug’s game, considering that you are setting yourself up against the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Google.

But a German company called Combot is confident that its new service has enough new features to attract users. These include the ability to have the service live on several machines at once, keeping them all in synch, and guaranteed delivery of messages whether or not the target is online. It also supports large attachments and files transfers.

The service's main selling point is a selection of animated avatars, many franchised from film companies, that can express a range of emotions. The service is free, though you have to pay for some of the avatars. These include characters from Lord of the Rings. Some, like Heidi, who is pictured above, are free when you sign up.

Clearly the service is aimed at youngsters, and as a dotard I don’t feel qualified to judge whether this is a winner. When companies at Cebit started pitching novelty ringtones as a money spinner a few years back I thought they were crazy.

The service has been on beta test for the past few months but has now gone live. Most of the interface is graphical but apparently there is an English version where words are necessary.

Posted by Clive Akass on March 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Cebit: Come back infra-red, all is forgiven.

Infra-red data links (as opposed to IR remote controls) were for years the wallflower at the communications ball. PCW long bemoaned the fact that notebooks had an IR port as standard, but PCs didn’t, so the IR had nothing to talk to. You could buy an IR dongle but these cost well over £100, despite the fact that the bill of materials was about tuppence-ha’penny. 

IR never really lived down the bad reputation it got from poor early implementations. Wi-fi threatened to kill it off altogether, and emerging ultrawideband radio is being touted for high-speed peripheral device links of the kind Sharp's new Blu-ray player is using IR for.

It has obvious disadvantages, not least that you have only to stand in from of a link to break it, as Sharp’s manager of product planning pointed out at Cebit today. But I have long thought IR is overdue for a comeback – or perhaps I should say free-air optical links, which have the potential to transmit gigabits.

IrSS has a theoretical data rate of 16Mbits/sec, which is lower than rival wireless technologies. But its advantages should not be overlooked.

IR is secure: you cannot easily eavesdrop a tightly focused optical link. It is clean: no radio pollution raising the noise floor and or interfering with neighbouring networks. And it saves a lot of complicated negotiating and addressing – you simply point at what you want to talk to.

Think of all the negotiating Bluetooth would have to go through to pinpoint one machine out of a crowded room to talk to. Think of what humans do: we get up close and point ourselves. This is exactly what you have to do with IR.

So what if someone moves across the path? You ask them to move out of the way, just as you would do if someone is standing in front of the television. Wifi traffic gets blocked and unblocked all the time; we just don’t notice because the obstacle is not physical.

Sharp seemed doubtful today whether the IrSS link would migrate to Europe in actual products - those on show at Cebit are not always exactly the same as those that hit the shop shelves. But I suspect that as radio pollution becomes more of an issue,which it surely will as wireless links scale up, minds will start to turn again to free-air optics.

Posted by Clive Akass on March 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

India, land of cheap broadband, could lead way on thin clients

One of the great unknowns about IT today is what the effect will be of emerging markets like India and China. One possibility is an erosion of Microsoft dominance and an increase in the use of open-source - ironically aided by more effective policing of digital rights. As pirated software becomes harder to get, these huge markets will seek cheap alternatives.

Richard Brown, British-born vice-president of marketing for chipmaker Via, believes India will boost the use of thin clients. It seems Via is doing a lot of work in India, and Taiwan-based Brown says he is going there "a couple of times a quarter".

Part of his work is promoting Via's PC-1 project to bring low-cost computing to countries like India. "Broadband is cheap there - between $6 and $10 a month, but computers are still expensive," he said during a stopover in London.

Thin clients, which act as the front end for remote server-based applications, make a lot of sense in this context because they can be built much more cheaply than full-fledged PCs. And services like Google Apps essentially provide free software for use over the network link.

Via has produced three reference designs for thin clients, called the E-Series, based on its own processors.

At the other end of the computing scale, Via's low-drain C7 processors and small Epia EN15000 mainboards are making high-performance cluster computing relatively affordable for smaller business, according to a start-up called Ainkaboot.

One of its compact Octimod MPC7-1500 cluster modules packs eight board onto a 4U rack - or 16, with two modules stacked back to back. Prices start at around £10,000, including installation, and if you need more capacity your can simply attach another module.

Posted by Clive Akass on February 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Free love among the docking stations and a UWB reality check

Interesting talk yesterday with Jason Slaughter, product manager at DisplayLink, which was known as Newnham Research until late last year. It designs software and chips that can drive monitors across virtually any physical or fast wireless link.

A virtual graphics card is created on the PC which sends a compressed data stream typically across a USB 2.0 lead, allowing it to drive a monitor. As we reported yesterday, one use is in docking stations, when the USB lead also carries keyboard, mouse and audio data, allowing docking stations to mate with any notebook. One lead and they are anybody's.

The USB 2.0 lead can be replaced by a wireless USB 2.0 link, an emerging technology that uses Ultrawideband (UWB) radio instead of the physical cable. DisplayLink's system adjusts to the available data rate, and reduces latency by tricks like transmitting mouse clicks immediately, without waiting for a frame to be sent. "The response is very crisp - not like you get with some wireless systems," said Slaughter.

I  wrote a couple of days back on the profound effect UWB display links could eventually have on the digital home, when potentially any device could use any monitor.  This in turn could increase the popularity of small ultra-mobiles because they could always use a big screen when required.

One thing puzzled me about reports of Displaylink's demonstration of a wireless PC-monitor link at the 3GSM show. Its high-end chip can stream data for a 2-megapixel display, enough for high-definition; USB 2.0 is rated at 480Mbits/sec, again well fast enough for HD even allowing for the fact that real-throughput will be more like 200-250Mbits/sec. Yet a video stream of "only" DVD quality was mentioned,

But Slaughter says that if you are playing a DVD video and scaling it up to a 1280 by 1024 PC screen you are in fact dealing with a data rate close to that of HD TV.

More surprising to me was his revelation that Displaylink was getting only 20-30Mbit/sec out of the Wireless USB link - a tenth of the real data rate of the wired version, and roughly what you would get from a good Wifi 11g connection.

"Pure radio to radio is very much faster," said Slaughter. "I've seen [UWB alliance] WiMedia guys demonstrating 1Gigabit/sec. But as soon as you get into the real world things are very different."

Current products are loading in the Media Access Control, WiMedia, and USB.2.0 protocol stacks, all of which take a penalty and are designed for wired rather that wireless links, Slaughter said. Devices using the links treat them as ordinary wired connections, and the data stream has to pass through compatibility layers. But a direct access mode will cut through a lot of this stuff.

"I see no reason why these things should not be solved. By the end of this year we should be seeing real data rates of 150-200Mbits/sec - and that's on today's hardware."

Slaughter said UWB products using DisplayLink's technology will not appear until data rates reach this level. Incidentally the demonstration system used an Intel Wireless USB on the PC side an Alereon module on the monitor side.

Posted by Clive Akass on February 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How the death of TV sets could change mobile computing

Most LCD TVs sold over the past couple of years can double as PC monitors, eroding the distinction between the two. The emergence of UWB monitor links could eliminate the distinction altogether; the standalone TV set will give way to the smart monitor that can be used as the front end for any device that happens to be talking to it - including a set-top-box or TV tuner.

This is already the case in homes networked by early adopters, where the TV can easily be used as a dynamic photo frame, an audio player, a video screen, and a PC monitor. But the system has to be foolproof to go mainstream and UWB should eventually eliminate much of the tangle of cables in the average living room.

The downside is that it requires more cabling between rooms because UWB is very short range; but this may in the long term prove essential to ease the problem of wireless pollution, which will only get worse with the industry more bothered with hyping today's products for quick sales rather then developing optimum solutions for the future.

The industry answer is that emerging 11n Wifi wireless will provide the range and bandwidth to reach the places UWB hasn't got the legs for; but there have to be doubts about whether 11n will scale up if everyone starts using it to throw high-def video about. The first draft of the 11n spec was all about increasing range and hogging limited bandwidth to boost data rates, both of which will exacerbate the contention that is already cramping the use of Wifi in cities.

A compromise would be to use very focussed Wifi beams at minimum necessary power to link floors, which would reduce contention and incidentally increase security.

The most interesting aspect of UWB monitor links is the knock-on effect it could have on mobile computing. Notebook users today carry a nearly full-sized monitor around with them, which adds to the weight and battery drain. They are hardly likely to do this if they can use any available TV or monitor.

So think again if you regard ultra-mobile PC screens as too small. Their day will come.

Posted by Clive Akass on February 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

UWB could reduce anti-social use of Wifi - when MPs get round to it

Open a laptop anywhere in central (even outer) London and the chances are that you will find four or five Wifi networks within range. There are only three non-overlapping sets of frequencies in the most-used 2.4GHz bands, which means that these networks are certain to be contending with each other - and this using spectrum already crowded with other applications, such as microwave ovens and Bluetooth.

Next-generation 11n Wifi technology could make the situation worse by extending the range and hogging bandwidth in the process known as channel bonding - equivalent to using two telephone lines instead of one to double throughput.

At the same time people will be encouraged to start using Wifi to stream high-definition video, meaning channels will be more intensively used and contention will get worse.  Wifi is not going to scale up well.

News of EC approval of ultrawideband (UWB) technology got submerged in Christmas seasonal spirit, but it could prove a good alternative (or complement) to Wifi. Of course it may turn out to have snags and it may, like Wifi, be hyped into uses for which it is not suitable.

But it looks promising. Firstly, it is fast: Wireless USB, which replaces the usual physical USB cable with a UWB link, is rated at 480Mbit/sec. Secondly, it is short range, designed for communication within rooms, which maximises the number of possible users in a given area (take note those Wifi vendors who boast of the unneighbourly reach of their products).

The short range is a problem, too, of course because UWB cannot by itself be used to distribute data around a home or office building. But Wifi is overused for this purpose, with the encouragement of companies that ought to know better. It should, where possible, be used to complement a physical network not replace it.

We will have to become ever more subtle in our use of spectrum as local wireless network links become even more widespread. As a general principle they should be of the shortest range and at lowest practical power; where a longer range link is necessary, a directional beam should be used to minimise interference with other networks.

UWB can be used for simple peer-to-peer applications such as dumping pictures from a camera to a PC or set-top-box. But it can be linked into a physical home network, and if it encourages more people to set one up, then so much the better.

It might also get companies thinking of ways to facilitate home use of Cat5 cable or fibre (see, for instance, the latest idea from Tenvera) instead of trying to kid people that Wifi is satisfactory alternative.

Ofcom does not seem to be falling over itself to get legislation framed for UWB, even though it has approved the technology in principle.  But while it is talking to parliamentarians, it would do well to discuss the establishment of some sort of best practice for networking homes – one that does not involve the promiscuous and anti-social use of scarce spectrum.

Posted by Clive Akass on January 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Home networking speed tests

The testing of Panasonic's Ethernet-over-mains networking kit, the BL-PA100KT, threw up some interesting questions for us here at PCW.

In our BL-PA100KT review we reported TCP file transfer speeds because TCP is reliable and sends data in order. It is the staple diet of the networks and the internet.

UDP, on the other hand, is unreliable with packets going missing from time to time but it is a lot quicker because it doesn't perform the same checks.

UDP has been used for rudimentary tasks for years, like keeping networks awake, but it is now being used widely in IPTV and other media streaming; if you lose a little bit of data that doesn't matter too much because the picture will just lose a little clarity.

So, from a testing point of view it's interesting to provide two sets of data; TCP transfers and UDP transfers.

Using the Panasonic BL-PA100KT home networking kit in TCP testing (for example, word documents, photos or a big zip file) we achieved 25.4Mbits/sec but for UDP (video streaming) we averaged 78.3Mbits/sec.

These are phenomenal speed differences which make UDP transfers much more attractive for media streaming; at 78.3Mbits/sec this network could handle multiple high definition streams with ease.

PCW currently reports on TCP results as the datagram protocol of choice, but as streaming HD content becomes more of an issue in our lives we'll start to look at UDP too.

If you see vastly different speeds in different publications then specifying UDP or TCP becomes important.

Finally, like all homeplug-esque products, Panasonic claims its power line products are severely affected by electrical noise that is passed onto the electrical wiring in your home. Apparently noise can limit speed and reliability of their adaptors, however I found no such problems.

Energy efficient light bulbs are supposed to be a major offender so I conducted brief speed tests in the dark, with everything in my house turned off, then in the light, with everything turned on (energy-efficient lamps, TVs and all) and found no meaningful difference in speeds.

Posted by Emil Larsen on January 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Is TV 'instant networking' too good to be true?

Consumer electronic devices like TVs will be networked simply by plugging them into the mains, if Panasonic has its way. The company has confirmed my rather rushed story from Friday, which followed the release of its data-over-the-mains kit into the UK.

It is working on implementing the technology at the circuit-board level of TVs and other devices, which will be launched first into Japan. The idea is wonderful, if only it would work. No messing about with Wifi, Ethernet jacks. or even mains Ethernet adapters. If a device is on, it will talk to its neighbours.

There are a number of caveats. Mains data is susceptible to interference from appliances like washing machines. And plug-and-play networks need standards: Panasonic is using a proprietary technology and so unless this is adopted by other consumer electronics companies it will only work with the company's own equipment.

Yet giants like Samsung, LG, Sharp and Sony belong to the Home Plug Powerline Alliance, which has a rival technology.

Then there are the concerns over mains data itself, which in radio terms is filthy: power leads were not designed to carry high-frequency signals and they act as transmitting aerials.  Companies assure us that frequencies that might cause problems are 'notched out' and that the RF levels are too low to cause problems. But I am not convinced that anyone knows what the cumulative effects will be of millions of homes in a city using the technology.

At the very least it will raise the noise floor. And even low-power short-wave signals can cross continents because they bounce back from the ionosphere, which is how radio hams get to talk to the world. A capricious burst at a certain frequency in London could conceivably jam ambulance communications in Cape Town.

We are already suffering from Wifi noise. I don't think I have set up a Wifi link recently where there have been fewer than five installations within range; you can't have more than three 11b/g setups near each other without some contention. Yet the industry is talking about pumping up the range of Wifi and using it to shunt around HDTV. Is it really going to scale up?

My pet idea is to stick fibre into mains cable and network new houses at the time you wire them up. With 300,000 news homes due to be put up in Britain alone there would be plenty of incentive to develop foolproof interconnects and train people to install them.

Posted by Clive Akass on December 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Draft-n routers as fast as 'g' should have been

802.11n will be the next major Wi-Fi standard since 802.11g. It has not yet been ratified so manufactures are calling their equipment "Draft-n".

Today we spoke to a spokesman from TrendNet today who claimed draft-n routers from Buffalo and Netgear don't work properly with older Wi-Fi equipment.

He also claimed that their new router can achieve 120-125 Mbits/sec in the real world but was cautious on the router being fully compatible with the final "n" standard: "we should be able to do it" is perhaps the most honest response in the industry. Other manufacturers simply claim all that's needed is a firmware upgrade and their draft-n products will become just 'n'.

Draft-n routers claim transfer speeds up to 300Mbits/sec but PCW's Will Stapley recently tested one and found it never exceeded 50-60Mbits/sec for normal file transfers.

TrendNet said 600Mbits/sec products will start shipping in March 2007; however we really are entering another 'model number' scenario, much like AMD originally did with its Athlon XPs.

Posted by Emil Larsen on October 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New wireless links start to run through the alphabet

Curious story yesterday about Wi-bree, a new short-range wireless link being promoted by Nokia. It's designed for tasks requiring bursts of activity over a very short range and it has a very low idle power, so that it can run for a very long time off tiny batteries (and, presumably, solar panels that are increasingly being used to power dispersed sensors and other gizmos). This sounds remarkably like the spec for Zig-bee, which is already well-established.

A spokesman for the Zigbee Alliance said Wi-bree seemed to be limited to point-to-point personal networking applications, whereas ZigBee has typically been used in mesh networks of sensors. He went on: "With very little technical detail to go on we can only surmise that this is simply a proprietary solution masked as some kind of industry-driven push. They are apparently using the Bluetooth radio frequencies in new ways for mobile phones to drive Nokia sales."

There is no reason why Nokia should not design its own technology to suit its specific needs (though sensor communication is one task cited as suitable for Wi-Bree). Wi-Bree does have a faster data rate than Zigbee - a rated 1Mbit/sec as opposed to 250Kbits/sec - though this may not be significant for the kind of work both are designed for. But why the similarity in names? Is someone making a point? Or are they going to run through the alphabet with new links: ZigBee, Wi-bree, X-bee...

Posted by Clive Akass on October 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Devolo launching fastest Homeplug yet

Devolo is launching the first 200Mbps Homeplug AV device next week, allowing for the fastest streaming of data around electricity cables in the home yet.

Although the standard is classed as 200Mbps, as ever with networking devices, data never moves at that speed, so you can expect to see peaks of about 90Mbps when moving data solely around the home network and around 60-65Mbps if going out over the internet.

The AV standard streams audio and video around far faster a network; its high speed meaning that images will be far smoother and that products are better able to cope with noise. Proponents also argue that data moving over electricity cables is more secure, plus homeplugs require no set up.

Two addition Homeplug standards under still under development, including Broadband over Powerline – which should be ready early next year - plus members are exploring faster bits rates for the future.

The Devolo dLan200 AVdesk will cost €129 for a single unit or €229 for two. The next version of the product will return to Devolo’s usual design of an enlarged plug.

Posted by Rob Jones on September 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The future of the Internet Protocol

The move from IPv4 to IPv6 is underway. Version 6 is capable of supporting orders of magnitude more IP addresses than v4 can with its conventional xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx format. It's expected to take some years before the migration is complete. Combine this switchover with the surge in VoIP technologies and you can see why IP is generating a lot of interest.

There's a webcast at 1pm (UK time) tomorrow discussing these issues with two experts in the field, Luke Mellors, CIO Expotel, and Graham Whitehead, Futurologist BT.

You can catch the webcast live here.

Posted by Marc Delehanty on September 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Netgear's new storage central: turbo

Netgear is readying its new network storage device, the Storage Central Turbo SC101T, for release in the UK this October.

The SC101T connects to your router via a Gigabit Ethernet port thus providing shared access to the two hard disks you insert into it. It supports serial ATA and IDE drives and backup via mirroring is possible.

Design improvements on the SC101, include a fan at the top to dissipate heat and an easier to open front panel.

Posted by Marc Delehanty on September 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

'Look - no PC' web phones unveiled

Philips and Netgear have unveiled the first home cordless phones capable of making free Skype web calls without using a PC.

As we pointed out when we previewed them two days ago, the launches at the Berlin IFA consumer electronic show could help to take Voice-over-IP calls into the mainstream for the first time.

The Philips VOIP841 and Netgear cordless phones can also be used to make standard dial-up calls, including 999 emergency calls - a facility not available in pure web telephony.

"We are broadening our reach to mass consumers by offering them the opportunity to communicate via Skype without having to be tied to the computer," said Stefan Öberg, hardware general manager at Skype.

Users with cordless handsets will be able to make both Skype and dial-up calls simultaneously.

People already using Skype users can download all their numbers to the new handsets. They can also use the phone to search for Skype contacts. 

The new handsets use the same Dect technology used on standard home cordless phones and so do not require a home Wifi network; neither will they conflict with one.

Posted by Clive Akass on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Belkin N1 draft-N wireless kit arrives in UK

After launching recently in the US, the Belkin N1 draft-N range of wireless kit has finally made it to the UK. Promising link speeds of up to 300Mbits/sec and a maximum theoretical throughput of 150Mbits/sec, it's targeted mainly at those with heavy-duty multimedia streaming demands, such as high-def movies.

There's also a companion N1 PC card for notebook use and a desktop USB adapter. The N1 range will go on sale in September priced of £149.99 for the ADSL modem/router, £129.99 for the router, £69.99 for the notebook adapter and  £79.99 for the USB desktop adapter.

We've got samples of the router and notebook adapter sitting in the labs and will be bringing you a full review as soon as we can, and we certainly hope they perform as good as they look.

Posted by on August 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thin time for handsets but solid-state ultra-mobile PC eclipses all

Thin is in for mobile handsets this year, judging from the latest crop being shown off operators. This cool 3G design (left), called Ice, is exclusive to 02 and will be available from next month. It includes an MP3 player, Bluetooth, USB, and packs a 1.3 megapixel camera. And it weighs in at just 92g.

The Ice was one of the models being shown off by O2 at a party last night to demonstrate products that will be available next Christmas. It was also showing a new service designed to help people trying to lose weight. So you buy your new phone at Christmas, and then dial-a-diet to lose the weight you have put on over the holidays.

02, recently bought by Spanish operator Telefonica, is being slow off the mark launching HSDPA services which currently offer mobile access at up to a rated 1.8Mbit/sec – going up to 3.2Mbit/sec perhaps as soon as next year. T-Mobile already offers HSDPA in spots areas and 3 is about to launch a service.

Which makes the news that Samsung is packing HSDPA into its latest ultra-mobiles, including the very interesting solid-state Q1 Origami, not to mention its new slimline Q40 (right), all the more exciting. It means that broadband on the move is becoming a reality for the emerging class of truly mobile PCs.

It must be less than ten years ago when a mobile data communications system was demonstrated at the Networks Show in Birmingham. It was so big it had to be packed into a Land Rover, bristling with aerials.

Posted by Clive Akass on August 18, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More on 3's HSDPA mobile broadband demo

Details revealed yesterday of data rates available on the rival Wimax and HSDPA mobile broadband technologies give only the haziest indication of their relative merits. Only when the services are actually in operation will we know what kind of speeds can be achieved in practice.

HSDPA will be available earlier and even if you take the lower estimation of the kind of data rates you can expect on the street, around 500Kbits/sec, it will be as fast as an entry-level ADSL line, which is seriously useful. In fact a real 500K throughput would be faster than a 500K DSL link, because that too is subject to contention and line noise and will generally deliver considerably less than its rated performance.

Intel-backed Pipex Wireless has to get regulatory approval for mobile use of the spectrum it owns before it can offer any kind of rival service using Wimax, though it plans to roll out services for fixed access in areas where wired access is poor or non-existent. It is likely, initially at least, to cherry-pick areas such as city centres for any mobile services it offers.

So Wimax mobile access will for some time be available only in hotspots, rather as Wifi is now but with base stations covering entire neighbourhoods. And, despite promising trials, it is not at all clear whether Wimax will be faster in practice than HSDPA - though users will be offered different speeds for different prices.

In short, Wimax can't compete on coverage, it can barely do so on speed, and it will come late to the mobile broadband market - and then only if Pipex Wireless comes up with the cash to roll out the infrastructure. The one thing going for it is Intel, which has talked of making Wimax standard on Centrino notebooks rather as Wifi is now.

This would enable Wimax and HSDPA  to coexist as people could choose whichever is the cheapest or fastest way to get a link.

Mobile operator 3 would give few details of charges for its  HSDPA mobile broadband service, though if you buy a video or audio track from the company's own servers the bandwidth charge will be included in the price of the content.

The technology has considerable advantages for the operator itself as HSDPA, by cramming more data onto the same carrier waves, makes far more efficient use of the three mobile channels for which 3 famously paid billions in Gordon Brown's 3G auction. 'We can choose to increase the number of users or have the same number using higher speeds,' technical solutions director Gordon Baxter said.

He also previewed some of the HSDPA phones that will become available from late this year. The one pictured at the top of this article is HTC MTeor, which uses Windows Mobile 5.0 and supports HSDPA at 1.8Mbits/sec. It has a 2.2in QVGA transflective screen andf packs a 1.3 megapixel camera.

Pictured right is an LG Electronics design with similar connectivity, a 2 megapixel camera and a 2.2in QVGA TFT display.

Motorola's 3G Razr (left) supports HSDPA at 3.6Mbits/sec, tri-band GSM and GPRS/EDGe and also has a 2.2in QVGA TFT screen. All three are due to go on sale late this year. These pictures are scanned from printouts of PowerPoint slides, so the quality is poor.

Posted by Clive Akass on August 16, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wifi encryption: a false sense of security

Do you use WPA encryption and scoff at those poor fools still using WEP or even worse leaving their wifi unencrypted?

Well laugh no more. We've always known that wifi wasn't particularly safe and secure but our eyes were opened to its glaring vulnerabilities yesterday.

We reported on Foundstone's highlighting of wifi security issues earlier today. Ken Baylor and Martin Pivetta (both of Foundstone - a division McAfee) gave us a live demo as they hacked a wireless network in the PCW labs.

Their laptop, which was set up to sniff packets made pretty short work of the 128-bit WEP cipher when there was a steady flow of network traffic.

WPA was smashed in less time but only when packets were sniffed while a computer was connecting to the network.

Roll on the next generation of network encryption ...

Posted by Marc Delehanty on July 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Radio gears up for ultra-mobiles

Wireless shows are not the best places to demonstrate the likes of Bluetooth and Wifi because just about every stand is using radio of some kind, so everyone is fighting for airspace.

So it was brave of Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) to invite us to the Wireless Event show in London's Olympia yesterday to show us how its new improved technology allows WiFi and Bluetooth to coexist in the same device. And it was not surprising that the signal did break up a little.

But it worked, which is a big advance on the first Bluetooth devices which at close range could kill a Wifi link stone dead. Technology allowing Wifi 11b/g and Bluetooth, which both use unlicensed 2.4GHz spectrum, to coexist in the same device has been around for a long time. But CSR says its modules can now allow a device to cope simultaneously with two real-time streams: a Wifi voice-over-IP call and a Bluetooth stereo feed to a headset.

Simon Finch, vice president of CSR's Wifi strategic business unit, points out that this is quite a feat, as the packets in both data streams have to be 'interleaved in the air' so that the received signal keeps pace with how it was transmitted. 'You cannot get away with dropping a packet,' Finch says.

The chips that do these things are tiny, the size of your little finger nail, though they have to be because they are designed for mobile phones. A new version of CSR's Bluecore 5 chip packs FM radio - a minute analogue front end mixes the signal down to an intermediate frequency, which is pushed through an analogue-digital converter.

For me the most exciting aspect of CSR's stand was that it showed the wireless technology coming together to realise the potential of ultra-mobile PCs. But also on show was a very smart Plantronics stereo headset (right) that I haven't seen before. This is the type that allows you to make phone calls and listen to music tracks. We'll try to get one in for review.

See also 11n Wifi will have two versions