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An Introduction To Wireless USB (WUSB)
An anonymous reader writes "This technical whitepaper by Rafael Kolic, a technology marketing manager in Intel's Corporate Technology Group, introduces Wireless USB (WUSB) and explains how it will impact device performance and mobility. The latest iteration of USB technology, WUSB will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices -- but without the cabling."
Or the security.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So soon after the "Bluetooth is Dying" article we get this.
:)
Methinks a conspiracy!
In all honesty, this looks like quite nice tech though I can imagine some of the implementation will be a real pill. Problems like how to manage roaming a device from one cluster to the next will surely require some ingenuity, especially given that backwards compatibility with classic USB devices is a goal (though I presume that those will only be adjuncts to the cluster, sitting at a wirelesswired bridge).
Bluetooth has fulfilled quite well the idea of a truly ad-hoc network among devices, but I assume that will be a much more difficult thing to achieve with WUSB, making some, I'm sure, doubt the point of the project. I think the idea of devices beaming data around to each other at 480 mbits answers that one quite nicely. I look forward to this*
*linux and OS X support for this; until then, I ain't touchin' it
Will this have longer range than Bluetooth? If so, it will fly, especially if some sort of OS-transparent USB-WUSB adapter is available. If not, I doubt there's much sure for it. What about security? Will it be encrypted at all? Last thing I need is to be using a WUSB mouse on a plane and having some kid three rows back taking over and h4x0r1n6 my b0x3n.
You are not the customer.
Speed?
Security?
Power requirements?
Range?
Cost?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
All of the problems that immediately came to mind, fell under the unsurprisingly vague section Design Considerations.
And none of them seem solved...
Hell, did it even mention what spectrum was being targetted?
It's wireless, but what does it have to do with USB? Can I plug my wired USB devices into some sort of wireless adapter piece and have wireless USB? What? Huh?
No, Bluetooth is much smarter because it doesn't require a PC. Bluetooth is peer-to-peer whereas USB is a stupid bus for connecting devices to a PC.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Bluetooth is a low power, relatively low speed, low range wireless personal network. It's not meant to transfer large blocks of data.
Unfortunately Bluetooth arose in an age where it was already outdated, as our devices quickly became too powerful for this dismal standard.
I'm really excited about wireless USB, especially if cheap solutions allow us to convert wired to wireless. I work in a high tech classroom with digital smartboards and a stereoscopic wall, and one of the problems we're having is connecting devices (such as cameras and microphones for video conferencing) from the classroom back to the computer closet behind everything. The normal cables just don't reach, so we have to either use a series of repeaters, or USB to ethernet converters, both of which are nontrivial in price.
Of course if they could develop cheaper wifi chips, everything could just have an 802.11x interface and you could network any devices, so maybe what we'll see is a happy medium between bluetooth and wifi.
Not so sure this is true. I took a look around at my setup (not that I'm assuming everyone has the same things, but I consider myself a typical geek). Most of my USB devices require a power cable: scanner, printer, Logitech Mx 700 mouse (cradle), Palm cradle, & external HDD. Then there are other devices that don't "need" a power cable: digital camera & MP3 player. The only two devices that I'd have to add a power cable to would be keyboard (could do batteries here) and webcam. Seems like I'd just have fewer cables and USB hubs sitting around, which would be nice.
Will this have a standard way for wireless headsets to connect to phones and wireless headphones to connect to audio equipment?
If not, bluetooth is needed as well.
Wait a second. Has anybody figured out why we need batteries for our wireless keyboards and mice? Is it a conspiracy? I mean, seriously. You can't convince me that wireless mice -- which use all of 1 AA battery that lasts for, well, months I imagine.. couldn't be powered by some kind of capacity setup and a wheel that generated power from the mouse ball. Of course, this is different with optical mice, but there's no reason there couldn't be some kind of ball for generating power, and then optical sensors for the tracking, so as to avoid the traditional problem with conventional mice where the pickups get dirty..
And keyboards? Give me a break! Don't tell me there isn't enough energy coming from my typing, to transmit that information to my computer...
Has anybody worked on this?
I want my patent.
- reid
People get so caught up in the wireless craze..
But unless it's a PDA, keyboard, or mouse, it's not going to be wireless, you'll have to plug it into the wall for power. Unless of course, you like buying lots and lots of batteries. Rechargable you say? Find a wireless battery charger and I'll retract.
So, you still have to cable the power cord. I mean, I'm not really saying this wireless stuff is bad, it's not. You can plug in your printer across the room and not have to run the USB/LPT cable.
I guess you have to take the name "wireless" literally, it's not "wirenone" it's just LESS wires.
If this becomes a common standard, however, it would be nice being able to buy *any* wireless USB mouse and not worry about what brand reciever you have. Although, this really isn't a huge issue.. Logitech wireless KB/Mouse stuff is cheap anyways.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Not many at Best Buy, However at UPS (as in United Parcel Service) they recently bought scanners using Bluetooth to connect a base station attached to workers by a belt, with a scanner strapped to their hands. The result is soemthing very Sci-Fi'ish and actually quite useful (you can walk the scanner portion long distances away from the base portion and it will still function as intended -- using bluetooth)
I'm certain other large firms have things like this using bluetooth. While I have no personal use for bluetooth, and prefer wired devices anyhow, there are undoubtedly many companies using it to solve tricky issues.
Though since bluetooth is dead I guess nobody will be using it anymore.
Spy 1: "s...l...a...s...h-" /. again! All right, let's go. EXECUTE EXECUTE EXECUTE!"
Spy 2: "Damn! He's going to
Spy 3, at your home: "Step away from the keyboard, G4! We know what you've been up to!"
Just trying to keep things in perspective: what's someone who's going to the trouble of keylogging you really going to find?
If you're a crime lord or into child pornography, you'd have to be pretty dumb to use a wireless keyboard, and the police would find another way to tap you.
Your credit card, bank account info, etc? There are much easier, more efficient ways to get that information.
--RJ
I can understand a bluetooth iPod or other mobile device, but for electronics equipment that sits in your house, wires work better. For example, I don't see why people put up with crappy 10-55 Mb/s Wifi when standard cabling is so cheap! Likewise, why do you want wireless HDTV for home theater? It seems to offer little benefit for stationary equipment. I think it has more to do with conspicuous consumption (oh look at how hip I am with the tech!) than practical benefits.
Competition between standards makes a lot less sense. With Betamax vs. VHS a lot of people, consumers and manufacturers, wasted a lot of time investing in and supporting the wrong one. (DVD writing is a similar, which was saved in part by the shared form factor). This could easily happen here, though I personally think Bluetooth and WUSB are very different (different topologies, for one thing).
You do have a point though. Some protocols/standards are just better, and there should be competition between groups to get their standard accepted. But this should happen before large-scale adoption of one or the other, to minimise 'damage' to the early adopters. At the moment it looks like Intel is jumping the gun, because its standard is not ratified by the IEEE (the relevant standards agency). Better for everyone if an open standard is agreed by everyone before devices are put on the shelf. Sadly, this doesn't always happen.
Of course if so, protocol designers should just define that at lowest protocol level such features are out of scope.. that is, to indicate they had done conscious decision, not that they were ignorant of obvious needs for actual appliances.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Ummm.. don't we already have something for that called Bluetooth? Hrm.
That's like looking at DSL and saying "don't we already have 14.4k modems?"
Bluetooth is slower than crap, making it useless for anything more advanced than syncing your addressbook.
imagine all the cool stuff you could do with wireless USB!! The foremost in my mind when i read about it was wireless keychain USB flash drives!!! that would be a really cool new toy and useful too, as long as they could make it battery-efficient that is.
For example, I don't see why people put up with crappy 10-55 Mb/s Wifi when standard cabling is so cheap!
Wireless is freedom, and it doesn't require you to snake wires through your walls (which is a major bitch in most cases if you want to do it right -- i.e. not running it through an air return and then hanging the wire around your baseboards). The few times I've really had the need for 100Mbps (versus the 36Mbps I'm currently getting over 802.11g, up on the second floor with the WAP in the basement), I'll bring the laptop to the basement and plug-in, but otherwise this whole wireless thing is fabulous.
I don't know what is or who is crap here.
I'm using my bluetooth headset to yack on my cell phone with absolutly no latency.
I can't say the samething for the USB1.1 heaset I have for my computer. I have at least 1/4 of a second latency when talking to someone with net2phone or any other telephony application (that include Cisco SoftPhone).
So basicaly, a wireless connection that is 10X slower than a wired connection give me more quality... Go figure!
Well, you are talking about a distance of a few feet for your headset. Your net2phone connection has to go through encoding to TCP/IP and transmission through miles of cable.
-CowboyNick
Hey look kids, Rob Enderle showed up.
It comes down to what you need.
802.11* is a high speed standard for replacing much of the Ethernet wiring. Great for mobile devices that have good sized batteries (i.e. laptops).
Bluetooth went the other direction. Instead of focusing on speed, why not power? Bluetooth has a much lower power requirement, and at ~760kbps makes a great way for cell phones (which are currently in the ~128kbps range) to talk to small, low power devices (like a palm or WinCE or Zaurus).
I recently had the choice of PDAs to get one with bluetooth or 802.11. I took the bluetooth and so far have not had any regrets about it. Of course, my laptop has both 802.11 and bluetooth in it.
I know not to run services that don't use encryption over the internet or over wireless, but remember that there are lots of stupid people out there.
Wires are not cheap. A USB cable cost $8 The radio chip probably cost $2.
Because I can't just run an IPSec application on my mouse...
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Let's not forget about those of us who haven't yet purchased our own homes and are stuck in an apartment. Sure, a wired system is best, but I'm not allowed to drill anything. Putting the cables along the baseboard is tacky. Wireless definitely wins here. If I need to transfer something a little larger, I'll run a temporary wire, but that is rare.
Besides, do you really expect the average do-it-yourselfer to pull cable, use a punch down tool, and install jacks? Wireless makes sense again.
I couldn't have said it better.
It's been said again and again, but I'll do it again for fun if nothing else: if you need a very high speed connection, plug the damn thing in.
Here's the design philosophy for wireless communications, and for all things, really:
1: Make it cheap
2: Make it fast
3: Make it so it dosen't suck energy like a muscle car sucks gas.
Chose two.
It will hold true always. There will always be a solution that, while not the fastest, accompolishs most things that one could wish to do with it, be more cost effective, and use less energy.
Guess what? Bluetooth is that solution.
Looking over the other posts there was some concern about security. But the thing that I saw that made me bulk was the idea of WUSB hard drive. The problem I see is what happens if you turn off your computer, and your WUSB hard drive is on? Does that mean that some punk can then access your hard drive? Some things should be left with the security of a wire. I am all for innovation, but this is one area that I can see problems. Brings wardriving to a whole new dimension. Forget trying to hack the computer, just hack the hard drive. A hackers dream. And the whole idea of security being implemented on the software level -- something tells me that it means that WUSB may not be open source friendly. What vendor is going to want to release open source drivers for something that they most likely half-aced? Somehow I see a problem akin to the WiFi drivers -- few selection for those of us that want to use open source and use WiFi. A nice idea, but I nessarily like the idea of having my printer hijacked because some smuck walks by with a laptop.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I didn't mean to say that USB was only useful at high speed (although I can see where you take that meaning). I wanted to make two points: One) that Firewire would have been a much better choice when USB came out (in fact is still a better choice) and could have done everything USB could. Sure, mice and keyboards can run on something as god awful slow as usb 1.1 just fine, but there was no valid reason to build something that slow when firewire already existed. If USB had not been shoved down our throats and firewire used in it's place we would have firewire mice, keyboards, scanners and the rest. "Easy" is also just an issue because the USB drivers are pre-bundeled, if the better choice of firewire had been made then all of those devices would still work the same way for firewire. And Firewire is hot pluggable, the last benefit you attribute to USB. One thing that I don't think firewire offers in it's current form is the power supplying capability of USB, but a firewire based system with power also on the connector could certainly have been made, which would have given us one unified system.
Point Two): was that the choice of USB1.1 was clearly short sighted. The day I saw it I asked people "who ordered this" and within days I saw promise of a faster version coming in the future. But that didn't stop the spread of USB 1.1, with it's slow speed limitations. My notebook is less than a year old, not inexpensive, yet only USB 1.1 support was available in that product line. A lot of people spent a lot of money for USB 1.1 hubs and other devices that are going to start gathering dust soon (if not already) as they migrate to USB2, just to get close to where firewire was when USB came out.
Sure it has vendor support, but Microsoft is far from irrelevant there. We could speculate on why they did it to us, but such speculation can always be argued against. The point is this stuff originally came from Microsoft and Intel and there were better solutions at the time, only Microsoft's market presure made USB 1.1 what the vendors supported. And there is better technology than wusb, but Bill will give you wusb and tell you that it's good enough for you, likely while promising to give you wusb3 some day soon to fix the limitations of wusb.
By the way, there are not always better solutions for the applications I mentioned. Sure, I have my hard drives on an IDE interface on my desktop (and have used SCSI and other inferface technology as well), but when you want to add 120 gigs to a notebook with no external docking connector (or the ability to carry that much data on a hard drive to another location), you need something that can plug into a notebook or another computer. That isn't USB 1.1. While USB 2 is now about the same speed as firewire (actually slightly faster), it doesn't do the job that firewire does in allocating bandwidth on the bus. And just having multiple standards makes it much harder to find mating equipment and more expensive (anyone know where I can get a PCMCIA card with WiFi, USB2 and firewire on it, or even just both USB2 and firewire on the same PCMCIA card for an honest price?)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A supply of power to the device.
No, seriously, one of the advantages USB is supposed to deliver is that it has a 5v supply that can deliver power to devices so they don't need a power adaptor any more. Sometimes it even works, too - I have an unpowered USB doohickey that I plug my camera media into, for example. Do that with WUSB :-)
thats a bit of an unfair comparison. wires are cheap, very cheap, it's just that most places mark up wires to a huge amount to try and make up for the cheap pc's they sell. as as for radio chips, they might even be cheaper than that, but not to you, to someone buying 5000 of the damn things.
dave
"Bluetooth is much smarter because it doesn't require a PC."
Smarter in the sense of "the best networks are dumb, and innovation happens at the edges"?
Let's have a protocol that's as easy to solder to a PCB as RS232 is with no licensing requirements, a spec that fits on 2 pages of A4, and controller chips that you can buy in Maplin. Then we might get somewhere with this wireless idea...
Let me summarize why Bluetooth is not dead, and wireless USB is not really a competitor for bluetooth:
Wireless USB Power requirements: 300 mw ("with a target of 100 over time")
Bluetooth power requirements: 100 mW, 2.5 mW, 1 mW (the last two are class 2 and 3, the variants widely used.)
Frankly, wireless USB sounds less interesting to me. Well, it's a threat to Wifi, from the sound of it. It's really, really fast and power hungry. It sounds primarily for unwiring our desk-bound, non-mobile computer peripherals from the computer. But then we will have to plug them all into the wall instead. So there are a few that had power anyway and now we've cut the number of cables from 2 to 1 - OK. But quite a few the only cable was USB (and that was providing power) anyway. It wouldn't be a viable solution for things like wireless mouses and keyboards, for instance. And I don't think I'd want that instead of bluetooth for the PDA/phone or PDA/computer link.
There are a lot of applications where very low power (1 mw!) is much more important than bandwidth.
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Exposed wires are an eyesore, not to mention a potential safety hazard (tripping, children pulling, etc). Having said that, the optimal solution if you really have fixed locations where you use your PC is to wire correctly, which means running wires within your walls and installing actual outlet jacks at approximately the position of the PC. I _attempted_ to do this last weekend to run some television cable, and what a friggin' nightmare it is to put a wire correctly in existing walls. Eventually I gave up and ran it down the air return and then around the bottom of the baseboard. :-) For networking I just gave up and got a WAP (with WEP-128 encryption and WAP logon and MAC filtration, so I'm not overly concerned, though obviously a fixed wire is even better)
but if the article's claim is true this is far far smarter than Bluetooth
;)
"WUSB will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices -- but without the cabling"
does that mean that i can still have small devices draw power from the bus? wireless power transmision sounds good to me
Software Freedom Day!.
RS232 is simple as you say although the spec is bigger than two pages.
The Bluetooth specs include shared access to a noisy medium, so theres a lot of pages to the specification just to get that working. Want to see how many pages of specs relating to the various networks there are? Including the actual media, the signal as well as the bottom layer protocols?
Bluetooth also includes a lot of bluetooth profiles. This are roughly equivalent to the HTTP, SMTP, IMAP etc specs as used for internet services. You want to see how many of those can fit on two pages?
The only reason bluetoth has innovation happening at the edges is because the in-between is the ether.
You want something as simple as 2 pages and a bit of soldering? How about morse code and AM modulation, cos thats all you'll get.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
In fact, a lot of the security inherent in wired USB is tied to its inconvenience. Effective security requires that you "introduce" the two devices (the computer and the peripheral) to one another such that there's no ambiguity. If the two float out of range and float back in again, they have to pick each other up correctly.
With wired USB, it's clear how you switch a peripheral from one computer to another: I either switch the cables back and forth or plug in to a USB switch. What would a wireless USB switch look like? You can't automatically glom onto whichever device is closest, especially if you're in the middle of something like disk defragmentation or burning a CD.
None of these problems are unsolvable, but the solutions won't yield a wireless USB technology that's a transparent replacement for wired USB.
Sorry, Intel, but wireless is different.