Bye Bye Bluetooth
WiFi & Bluetooth
Come 2010 and no longer would you be using Bluetooth for short range file transfer. What’s coming from the WiFi Alliance is a really ground breaking stuff. WiFi Direct a new set of standards will turn your ‘WiFi gadget’ into an access point.
What does this mean?
In simple words you would no longer need a WiFi Router for a peer to peer file transfer. This means days of Bluetooth are numbered. This means very high speed peer to peer transfer (30 times faster than Bluetooth) with in a radius of 300 feet.
How will it work?
Any WiFi Device will be able to upgrade to WiFi Direct by a software upgrade and all new devices will be certified as ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Direct’.
WiFi Alliance consortium includes Intel, Cisco and Apple and almost all big players.
In a press release Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa said
“Wi-Fi Direct represents a leap forward for our industry. Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn’t available”
Bye Bye Bluetooth!
Follow-Up
Press Release:
Wi-Fi Alliance : Wi-Fi Alliance® announces groundbreaking specification to support direct Wi-Fi connections between devices
Thumbs-Up!
All Things Digital (WSJ) : Is Bluetooth on Its Way Out? by John Paczkowski
GigaOM : Wi-Fi Gets a Boost With New P2P Standard by Stacey Higginbotham
Between the Lines : Wi-Fi Direct connections coming soon; Like Bluetooth, but better by Sam Diaz
Ars Technica : Wi-Fi Direct protocol to ease peer-to-peer WiFi connections by Chris Foresman
9 to 5 Mac : Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi for Apple products shines in 2010 by Jonny Evans
image credit – brett’s blog
loved that article from 9 to 5 Mac in followup… Apple will rock in 2010 unlike M$, google.
(Twitter: @ mayank25may )
says:
Sick.
Wifi Vs Bluetooth? I would say both will always be there.. WiFi coz of speed, Bluetooth coz of low power consumption.
(Twitter: @ mayank25may )
says:
With the life battery improving every other day (http://bit.ly/3stUbN) and the amount of data storage increasing at an even higher pace I doubt if bluetooth will have any role to play in future.
(Twitter: @ ksantani )
says:
I just want to add one more point in favour of bluetooth.. By the end of 2010 most of the devices will have Bluetooth 3.0+HS (High Speed) standard which has high speed trasfer mode in comparision to WiFi apart from consuming low power.
Bluetooth 3.0+HS needs WiFi hardware to have high speed,
but WiFi can have that per se
Bluetooth will always find an application in low speed WPAN (wireless personal area networks) though there are competing standards like Zigbee.
There are some applications that just need to be wireless and data burden is very very low.
With this new Wi-Fi Direct technology, Can we access both AP’s and Wi-Fi direct protocol clients at the same time, i.e. if 802.11 client is connected to AP broadcast SSID, parrallaly can that cleint be able to access WiFi direct client?
(Twitter: @ mayank25may )
says:
I am not 100% sure on this… after reading this FAQ PDF ( http://www.wi-fi.org/files/20091019_Wi-Fi_Direct_FAQ.pdf )it looks possible.
The speed of the transfer is not everything for all use cases. Standard Blueooth may be on the way out for short-range data transfer (was it ever really “in”?) I’m product manager for the Tazzle IT, a revolutionary way to view, print and send from smartphones, beginning with the BlackBerry.
http://www.tazzleit.com
Tazzle IT leverages the Bluetooth chip for a few reasons. First of all, it’s already in the phones. But more importantly, by changing the way Bluetooth chips communicate, it has advantages of low power requirements, plus data can be sent securely via our transfer system which prevents both the PC and BlackBerry from exposure to data theft. This is not your typical Bluetooth. The BlackBerry pairs to the Tazzle IT USB device (not the host PC). Therefore, connections are completely hoc when Tazzle IT is inserted into any standard PC running our companion software. Using a proprietary protocol to push data from the BlackBerry through a virtual com port that disappears when the Tazzle app is closed, a user can print email content in seconds via any standard PC/printer. This PC doesn’t need onboard Bluetooth or wifi connectivity. The speed of the transfer is less relevant than the speed of the overall streamlined process: Tazzle IT lets you send email message content from your BlackBerry to a Tazzle-enabled PC to open in DOC format, then QuickPrint a single hard copy, leaving no data on the PC, nearly as fast as your printer can print. The PC client takes data received via Tazzle and automatically opens files for viewing or printing. Unless the user chooses to save them, these transferred files disappear when done. Data and files could be sent this way with higher speed chips, but will PC’s and devices be vulnerable to data theft, in which pull access is a part of the peer-to-peer network employing wifi?
Correction. I made a typing error: “…connections are completely hoc when Tazzle IT is inserted into any standard PC running our companion software.”
The connections are AD HOC, not “hoc”. Can you have a “hoc” connection?! Sorry!
Bruce
Thanks for the post! Looking forward to many new developments in Wi-Fi Direct in the very near future! To keep up to date with the latest developments, visit http://www.wifizz.com.