atheros

As predicted at CES 2012, the new and much faster wireless networking standard, 802.11ac, is really going to arrive this year.

Following Broadcom, Qualcomm Atheros today launched its own 802.11ac Wi-Fi ecosystem that covers all aspects of wireless networking--mobile devices, computers, and other electronics--scaling from home to enterprise applications.

Sharing the common 802.11ac standard, Qualcomm's new chips offer up to the top speed of 1.3Gbps (three-stream), 900Mbps (dual-stream), and 450Mbps (single-stream). Basically, the new Wi-Fi standard will offer comparable performance to Gigabit Ethernet, and even faster in some instances, so wireless networking will no longer be a compromise.… Read more

If Qualcomm Atheros President Craig Barratt had his way, the whole world would work like his house in Silicon Valley.

Barratt lives in the ideal vision of the connected home. He has precise control over things like temperature, energy consumption, the TV, stereo, and security system--all accessed remotely through his laptop. There's no remote control at home; he and his family can switch on the lights, open and close the curtain, and make sure the lawn is watered by using a connected iPod Touch.

Of course, it helps that Barratt actually wrote the software that powers everything in the … Read more

In a move to round out its wireless and networking product portfolio, Qualcomm today announced plans to acquire Atheros for $3.1 billion, or $45 a share.

For Qualcomm, the acquisition highlights a strategy to move beyond its traditional cellular market into more mainstream computing. With Atheros, Qualcomm gains access to wireless LAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth, GPS, passive optical networking, and powerline technologies. Qualcomm plans to take those products and ultimately integrate them with its smartphone and tablet chips.

Analysts were generally upbeat about Qualcomm's plans. Piper Jaffray analyst Auguste Gus Richard said in a research note that Qualcomm will … Read more

Wi-Fi is great, but unfortunately, the wireless signal oftentimes can't reach that far corner in the basement.

In this case, currently, the best solution is to get a pair of power-line adapters that turn your home's electrical wiring into data cables to extend your wired network without running network cables all over the place.

There are many different power-line kits on the market, such as the Plaster Networks PLN3, the Linksys PLK300, or the Western Digital Livewire. All of them work well but share a few common attributes: you'll need two adapters to make up one power-line connection, and each solution has its own esoteric way for you to set it up and manage it.

Wouldn't it be nice if the router itself had built-in support for the technology so you need just one adapter at the far end and have one central place to manage the wired power line and Wi-Fi network? It indeed would be, and more importantly, it will be available soon.

Atheros, maker of networking chipsets that power many networking solutions, announced today a new family of hybrid home-networking solutions that combines the popular consumer networking technologies into one. More specifically, the solution combines Wi-Fi, HomePlugAV Powerline, and Ethernet into an all-in-one solution for the home.

Atheros claims that the new solution not only boosts network bandwidth but also provides unprecedented simplicity to set up and optimize coverage. Its new family of network solutions includes: … Read more

Most existing wireless N routers, such as the Cisco Valet Plus or the Netgear WNDR3700, are based on the dual-stream standard that offers speeds of up to 300Mbps. There are also "light" versions of wireless N routers that are based on a single-stream standard and cap at 150Mbps, such as the TP-LINK TL-WR941ND.

However, the wireless N standard also allows for multiple-stream applications, and this is soon going to find its way to consumer-grade products.

Atheros, a top maker of chips that power networking products, debuted its first three-stream wireless N solution chips Tuesday--the Xspan AR938x and Xspan … Read more

Your mobile devices' wireless LAN is about to get significantly better.

Atheros, a mobile Wireless LAN (WLAN) chip maker, announced Monday the lauch of its newest and possibly the industry's highest performance mobile WLAN chip, the the ROCm single-chip 11n AR6003 family.

According to Atheros, this tiny new chip, currently the smallest WLAN chip on the market, measuring just a 5mm by 5mm, combines both the energy efficiency of Atheros' ROCm technology and the faster 802.11n WLAN performance. As a result, it offers up to 85Mbps of actual throughput speed in the 5GHz band and 48Mbps in the … Read more

Generally, wireless functions--such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular data, and so on--are added to your portable computer via add-in cards. These cards share the same PCI standard as other PCI add-in cards found in desktop computers, but they are much smaller in size.

Though small, there are only so many add-in cards a laptop, and especially a Netbook, can accommodate. For this reason, what Atheros, a known maker of wireless solutions, introduced Tuesday is a significant development.

The company announced Tuesday the industry's first single-stream 802.11n and Bluetooth combo solution on a Half MiniCard form factor for the PC … Read more

Update: I updated this posting to correct my misunderstanding of an ambiguous point in the news release--the ar5k-based OpenBSD driver isn't proprietary.

The Software Freedom Law Center, which provides free legal advice to free and open-source software projects, has declared an open-source project to support Atheros Communications wireless network devices to be free of copyright infringement.

The group--which employs notable attorney and former Free Software Foundation counsel Eben Moglen--performed a confidential comparison of the OpenHAL project and the Atheros HAL software whose functions it attempts to duplicate, the center said Tuesday. The audit was a response to allegations of … Read more