Multihomed WLANs from Intel

accessdeniednsp writes: "El Reg gives us some insight on Intel Labs' new software to let your wireless LAN card hop between various networks (802.3, 802.11, and 'fixed Ethernet' they call it). Perfect for us snoopers to walk by college frat houses and hopping on the 'net with our linux ipaq's :)" First company to come out with a "universal connectivity" PCMCIA card wins all the marbles.

Comments

who pays for firmware upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

The current model is that new features = new hardware.

Changing that model to new features = software download is substantially different, and a little scary for business.

If they offer a download, they would need to charge for it: software doesnt write itself.

With all the headaches associated with verifying
software releases across multiple hardware versions, I think it's cheaper and easier for everyone involved to just buy a new $100 hardware
when it comes out, rather than deal with the buggy firmware upgrades.

what do they mean with 802.3 *and* fixed ethernet?

[ruud]

802.3 is fixed ethernet, see this page.

Power Consumption Reference Also Interesting

[meehawl]

Sehert said the CPU only accounted for seven per cent of the typical power consumption of a mobile device (although the chipset accounted for another 13 per cent). With the LCD sucking up a third of the power consumed

It seems to me that controlling power consumption requires a user eye-tracking mode. As I look at my dual screen setup, at every moment my focus rests only on a small couple of square cm of the screen. Surely with eye tracking it should be possible to dim/fade the rest of the screen, cutting down power consumption.

This might also have advantages for graphics cards/CPU, because you could concentrate on doing most your rendering and aliasing in only the portion of the screen within eye focus. For that to work you'd need some sort of tile-based rendering system though.