Ready to bin your USB cables yet? Wireless USB hops on WiGig bandwagon

Having failed to carve itself a niche with ultrawide band radio, the USB Implementers Forum has jumped aboard the WiGig bandwagon and will slide up the dial into 60GHz. 60GHz is where WiGig lives, an internationally unlicensed band where there's plenty of space but propagation is poor. WiGig is proposed as the next generation …

[HMB]

Product looking for a Problem

I'm looking forward to wireless USB replacing my bluetooth wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and wireless games controller. I'm so excited about it I'm going to print a letter off with my wifi connected wireless printer.

So that would be flash drives left then. So flash drives... will the software that controls secure access to wireless flash drives be more or less difficult to use than plugging in a wired USB flash drive.

Oh dear. This might be a problem.

(I do love the technology, I just wonder about the economics)

[simmondp]

Product looking for a Problem - More

Ditto to previous, plus am I going to have to put batteries, or charge all those USB keys and other USB devices that get their 5V power down the cable?

[snowweb]

Wireless power?

So does this mean that my USB scanner, which gets it's power to power the sheet-feeder motor from USB and has no independent power source, would be able to obtain it's power wirelessly?

If so, it sounds like just what the doctor ordered. If not, then it's looses it's appeal, since I currently enjoy the fact that my mobile is charged while connected to my laptop by USB.

[Steve Knox]

Re: Wireless power?

it's looses it's

...

*SIGH*

[bluest.one]

Re: Wireless power?

Perfectly correct.

Its appeal is no longer present: its appeal has been let loose.

*DUH*

[Snake]

"Wireless USB with power"? A problem with an existing solution

...in the form of the preexisting device, the USB to Ethernet Bridge.

You add them to any Ethernet system, wired or wireless via your access point, and presto! you have your USB devices accessible via wireless. Plus something else: you can share your USB devices with multiple computers.

Been using them since 2006, first the Keyspan and now the Silex SX-DS-4000U2. Yes, powered USB for your devices plus sharing of devices to multiple hosts. Why wait another 3 years since their original promise of Wireless USB devices on your system when you can implement it now?

[Tokoloshe]

Does solve one USB problem...

I defer to Mr Dabbs for a more entertaining explanation;

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/15/something_for_the_weekend_usb_mishaps/

[RobHib]

WiGig Won't Be Plain Sailing.

Reckon WiGig won't be plain sailing, just getting transistors and other semiconductors to work at those frequencies is hard enough. Even dialectics and electrical substrates that work well at normal microwave frequencies can be problematic at 60GHz.

And it's not only walls and humans who'll be opaque to WiGig, many other ordinary day-to-day things are too, your wooden table or leather briefcase for instance--not to mention the cat, who'll invariably want to sit right next to the antenna or crawl all over it.

However, it seems to me the most difficult aspect of WiGig is when the service is extended to areas that are not direct or reflected line-of-sight (through walls, different rooms etc.). The psychology of users getting used to a considerably degraded service when they take their devices into the next room is likely to be very problematic.

User perception is everything and it might be difficult to reeducate.

Still, I'm looking forward to trying the product.

[CADmonkey]

Re: WiGig Won't Be Plain Sailing.

You're completely wrong.

The cat will be laying across your touchscreen.

[Charles Manning]

Re: WiGig Won't Be Plain Sailing.

To an extent you are right.

I am old enough to remember 100MHz transistors being amazing and GHz transistors being unthinkable. Now they are all meh.

The biggest limitation is propagation. We can lift transistor performance, but we're limited by the physics of high frequency RF. The whole point of Wifi in a domestic setting is that you have a single gizzmo to plug into the fibre modem and get wifi anywhere in the house. My current wifi struggles. WiGig just would not work.

[Charles Manning]

Improving USB

Perhaps just spend more time fixing up the hell that is USB drivers.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

For what?

WiGig isn't going to make wireless mice and keyboards perform any better. It won't help portable printers and scanners that need 5VDC. I don't like the idea of running disks or video over a connection that will constantly glitch from motion in the room. What's needing this solution?

[Harry]

A good start would be a Universal Rule that says the tiny CDs that contain them should say exactly *what* the driver is, instead of just "driver".

Or as a very poor second best, at least don't cover the entire surface in stupid dark colours that ensure you cannot read anything you write on them. But the CDs really ought to be properly and unambiguously labelled at source and the USB standard needs to say precisely that.