Wireless USB gadgets trickle into marketplace

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Krell expects tier-one laptop makers to bring Wireless USB support to market this quarter, with the first peripherals--hard drives, laser printers and multifunction printers--arriving in the fourth quarter of the year. "Bleeding-edge" handheld devices such as cameras, phones and music players will probably be shown off in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. It should arrive in TVs and set-top boxes by the holiday 2008 season.

"2009 and 2010 will really be the ramp years," Krell said, predicting that Wireless USB eventually will grow as ubiquitous as today's wired USB.

Adoption rate
The spread of Wireless USB will depend in part on cost and educational issues.

Although Wireless USB will, to a certain extent, compete with Bluetooth--for example, in sharing images taken with a cell phone camera--next-generation Bluetooth 3.0 and Wireless USB are also allies. They both use the same underlying radio communication technology, called ultra wideband, or UWB. That technology works by spreading low-power communication signals across a broad tract of the radio-frequency spectrum.

Because Wireless USB and Bluetooth 3.0 both use ultra wideband, device makers can use the same radios for either, aiding high-volume adoption. "Volume is going to drive cost down quickly," Ravencraft said.

Bluetooth is already established, but version 3.0 is expected to arrive in the market in about two years, Rebello said.

Ultra wideband has an inherent complication, though. Because of the breadth of ultra wideband's spectrum, the technology runs into different regulatory barriers in different countries. The United States, Japan, Europe and Korea have concluded which portions of spectrum ultra-wideband devices may use, and Canada and China are closing in on their requirements, Ravencraft said.

Another obstacle is education. Users must authorize connections by associating devices with PCs. One method is by plugging in a device with a USB cable, which triggers the computer to ask if the user wants to permit one-time or any future wireless connections. This method is useful for authenticating Wireless USB devices that lack a screen.

The second method, called "numeric compare," is useful for devices with screens. In it, the PC generates a number and sends it to the device wirelessly. The user checks to see if the numbers match, and if they do, the user can authorize that connection and, if desired, future connections.

But education also works in USB's favor. Much of the user experience, from bleeping alerts and pop-up dialog boxes asking how to handle files, are identical going from conventional to Wireless USB. And life is easier for programmers, too, who can recycle the "driver" software that PCs need to communicate with various devices.

People will learn about the workings of Wireless USB, though, Ravencraft predicted. The USB Implementers Forum is training sales staff at retailers such as Best Buy, is guaranteeing compatibility by permitting use of logos on certified products, and is working on advertising to help improve awareness, he said.

Lenovo expects the Wireless USB learning curve to be easy. "It should be plug-and-play," said Rajat Aggarwal, worldwide marketing manager for the company's T Series Thinkpad products. The company still is assessing how widely to support Wireless USB across its product lines, but it won't be as ubiquitous as 802.11 wireless networking, he said.

Soon the market will begin deciding how fast to adopt Wireless USB. USB allies are hoping to toot their horns a bit to get things started.

"We're really on the cusp of seeing our first end-user products certified," Ravencraft said. "We're going to make hay about it."

[IlanaGolan]

Still giggling

I'm having a fine giggle at being the first comment on this article. What's wrong guys? No opportunity in this one for Mac-MS bashing?

[eeemang]

Silly discussion from WINDBAGS?

Are you guys just windbags ALL the time or just on these discussion boards?
Take up bag pipes why dont you !
What is the topic here? New technology or ancient history...........................

He said She said blah blah blah .....

[ewelch]

Why bash?

The article was pretty accurate. It was Apple's iMac that finally
broke the chicken-egg logjam. Peripheral makers finally had a
computer that broke completely with the old interfaces (serial
and parallel) and gave them something to create USB peripherals
for. PCs then followed quickly after that.

Just like WiFi, Apple was a year ahead of the rest with putting
the capability in all of their laptops. Dell was second almost a
year to day day later.

But when the rest took off with USB, they quickly outpaced even
Apple's superior Firewire technology. So now even iPods have
gone with the much slower USB 2 interface. (Theoretical limits
are a joke, Firewire 400 is much faster in actual practice.)

If Apple was smart, they'd put wireless USB in the new iMac due
out soon and take the lead once more. Maybe with their
increasing market share (growing twice as fast as PCs these
days) they could have a faster impact on the overall industry.
Dell, I'm betting would follow within months.

[SeizeCTRL]

Really???

I remember having USB a year or two before the iMac.

I believe it was a Microsoft natural keyboard around 1997 that really had me going OOOH and AAAAH.

If memory serves me correctly the iMac came out in 99 but USB was out around 96. So why are you suggesting that the iMac get all the credit for this?

Remember, Apple was trying to push FireWire but licensing of the technology became an issue and USB took off after that... the iPods were firewire at one time and now they are all USB. Go figure!

[cuwickliffe]

Why?

Just at first glance, I don't understand why we need wireless USB. Bluetooth does exactly the same thing, and already works at the same range. What's the advantage?

[Shankland]

reporter responds: better than Bluetooth?

Here are a couple reasons I heard from Wireless USB advocates. Today, Bluetooth's data rate is way too low to make it practical for things like hard drives, CD recorders or transferring large quantities of digital photos or video. It's available in mobile phones and many laptops, but not in printers, cameras, GPS receivers, and any number of USB-enabled devices. Bluetooth 3.0 will offer better data transmission rates, but it's not due out for a couple years, and it will face its own challenges. The Wireless USB advocates also argue their technology is more familiar to average folks who may not have any experience with Bluetooth but likely have with USB.

[flitcraft33]

Two words, backwards compatability

backwards compatability

[flitcraft33]

AM I THE ONLY ONE ON CRAZY PILLS??!??

Hello, make a wi-fi USB dongle that plugs into ANY USB port and wirelessly connects to a hub. Have a slot in the hub where you plug in the dongles that imprints a network serial number unique to the hub so your devices only connect to your devices.

Make the dongle a USB-wireless bridge. VOILA! no more ^&(&^($!! usb cables for ANYTHING. Make the dongles port powered.

WHY IS THIS SO HARD???? What are these people thinking with this chicken and egg BS??? Just make it work with existing devices effortlessly.

Jeeze, if I had some venture capital I would market it myself. This is not rocket science.

Dan Sichel

[Shankland]

reporter responds: that's what they're selling, but...

The dongle/hub combination you describe sounds similar to what Belkin is selling and others will soon sell. It indeed is a help with the chicken and egg problem but it only goes so far: if your current devices all attach via wired USB, why buy some extra wireless widget just to move the cables one step farther away from your PC? Ultimately, the utility of Wireless USB will depend on devices and PCs having native support.

[Troll Hard]

This will only allow hackers

to break into your personal USB connections.

What were they thinking, man?

[J_Satch]

With a range of...

...30 feet and an inability to penetrate walls? I would be suspicious of the stranger who walked into my living room uninvited long before he opened up his laptop and booted up...

[joelcorley]

... that can break AES-128 encryption

WUSB uses AES-128. This encryption scheme is almost impossible to crack without knowledge of the master key. The master keys are 128-bit random numbers.

The wireless association method that the author calls "numeric comparison" actually uses a Diffie-Hellman exchange of a pair of 3072-bit public keys "under the hood". Diffie-Hellman is the basis of the most secure public key exchange methods used today.

128-bit master keys and 3072-bit public keys are far, far more secure than current SSL protocols - something you probably trust to secure your online bank transactions.

- Joel

[Michael00360]

Wireless USB

I'm looking forward to the day that I can finally get rid of all my cables on my computer (except for the power cable. However, being that this is new technology I am willing to wait until the bugs are worked out. I hope that with this wireless technology they will go ahead and implement some kind of WPA type technology like we see in wireless routers.

[The_Decider]

I hope this is a huge step ahead of the USB wireless mice and keyboard

The current crop is dismal.

[whizkid454]

Why the need for a hub?

Couldn't the Wireless USB "ports" be built into the motherboard of the computer? This would eliminate the wired connection from the hub to the physical, wired USB port. I guess this wireless hub is temporary until the technology itself is built into the motherboards?

[Shankland]

reporter responds: yes, exactly

The Wireless USB hub is potentially useful as a way to attach various wired USB devices. If you tote your laptop to work, school, home, or some other place, you don't have to unplug anything when you leave or plug it back in when you return. When the technology is built into computers (it's first showing up as optional miniature PCI cards, but will make its way onto the motherboard, no doubt), it'll be a lot more useful. Another reason you might want to keep a hub around: a lot of portable devices charge off powered USB ports.

[ashrafkadry]

the other way around

whizkid, sorry but I think you got it wrong, the hub won'tbe connected. The article failed to explain it correctly. The whole wireless USB package will consist of a dongle, which you connect to you computer to receive the message from and a hub where you connect to it devices which does not support wireless usb, like most devices today. so instead of connecting your printer or scanner to your computer, you connect them to your hub, and the hub negotiantes from afar with your dongle connected to your pc. You got what I'm saying. but the hub itself is not connected to your pc, its connected probably to a power outlet or it takes its power from the connected devices.

[ethana2]

Wow.... to point something out here..

usb is inferior. And that's because it capped bandwidth: a good protocol will scale up to whatever hardware will handle. Multiple pins included. I want a protocol that will scale from wimax to pci-e.

And I don't think that's as far fetched as it sounds. More on that idea at http://www.ethana4.blogspot.com/
under "usb 3.0"

tell me what you think- [e-mail]

[wirelessUSB]

Recently the Wireless USB display adapter was introduced to the market, which enables to stream video and internet from PC to TV.