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FireWire Gets Ready to Go Wireless
mindless4210 writes "The 1394 Trade Association has approved a specification for the development of wireless FireWire applications, which will let 1394-enabled devices, both wired and unwired, to connect with each other. The new spec will enable communication between a variety of devices, such as set-top boxes, HDTVs, tuners, and DVD players, all of which will be able to interoperate in home networks. Officials speculated that in the future there could be plug-in cards for set-top boxes enabling wireless connection to DVD players and hard-disk drives. The trade association also said it will work with the WiMedia Alliance to jointly develop collaborative products."
Great! Now that I've got this awesome free internet connection from my neighbors I can look forward to getting HBO without cables too! The future looks bright!
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
They need to get away from the 1394 name. It's confusing for people. They should call it FireWireless!!!
*.02c
Wireless FireWire
Yes but can it charge my ipod?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
On a hard drive of its own where the wife can't find it!
Wireless Firewire, aka Fire.
Extending FireWire is one piece of the puzzle, and I for one am anxious to see the products that will result.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Really, Ethernet has achieved dominance over the wired infrastructure.
The 802.11 (x) standard has achieved pretty much dominance over the wireless infrastructure.
It seems to me that this may be just another competing standard that will introduce incompatibilities and vendor lockin down the track. How is this magically different to bluetooth, wap, etc????
Kewl....all the early adopters can run off and buy this kit....I'll try and find a cost-effective consumer solution that is secure.
While the article kindly reminds us that Firewire runs at 400 Mbps, there is no mention of range. How much data can you transfer through the air before you start to cook things?
Having everything on your desk talk via wireless Firewire seems feasible. But is it possible to have an entire house run at 400 Mbps, walls, RF sources, and all?
Seems like this might be an 802.11g type deal with 54MB on paper and a much lower real life value.
Basically, yes, some are good for some things; others, for other things, and this usually centers around error tolerance- of the data you want transferred, and of your connection method.
Firewire, for instance, has error-checking and error-correction built into its spec (it'd be smarter about errors than, say, WIFI). You can build in the same with other protocols but you take a bigger performance and output hit and firewire might end up as more fundamentally reliable regardless. Some protocols do better with broadcast mediums as well.
Someday perhaps we'll standardize on one wireless protocol when we've enough over-the-air bandwidth and processing power as to make tradeoffs trivial, but that day has not yet come.
RD
Liar liar wireless bra and panties on fire.
Its not fireWIRE at all. Better names would be:
FireFi
WiFire
Fireless
FiFi
FireTooth
NAWP (not another wireless protocol)
This is a hacker's dream come true!
One of the great things about firewire is that it can power devices.. I guess this is no longer the case. Time to break out the ol ac adapter with your new 'firewireless' adapter. Not to mention, any device I can think of would need a PS, or are they going to release external HDs with giant batteries now?
Team targets 802.15.3 for wireless video networks
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
It means that the standard came from the same standard organization that set the original, so you can be pretty sure that they didn't do anything stupid that'd lock out the wired-generation devices from using a wired-to-wireless bridge.
In short, basing on an existing wired standard means all the wireless standard needs to do is to define a radio link that emulates a wired link. Only the radio bridges need to be aware that wireless is being used, the other end of the bridge can just claim to be a typical powered or unpowered hub. There'd likely be some sort of way to issue an "Are you wireless?" query to hubs so that appications that can't tolerate the small delay wireless creates can scream about not having a good enough connection, and things like that... but most of the heavy lift operations can just lean on the wired standard.
Yeah, the power thing is a bitch. You're absolutely right about the inherent difficulties. But I can't think about something that actually happened to me in my youth. I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I was haing a conversation with my mother.
"Man, I wish you could just play whatever movie you wanted to on your TV." (This was the mid-1970s, mind you) I continued, trying to be practical. "But it'll never happen."
Mom looked over at me and said, "Do you think the settlers crossing the midwest in their covered wagons could have even imagined television? Sometimes things that seem impossible turn out not to be so impossible after all."
Of course now I can pop a DVD of practically any movie I want and watch it at my leisure. I don't claim to have the answers to making the world wireless, but I have learned not to rule things out.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Simple. The two busses have little in common.
Firewire:
- peer-to-peer design (all devices are created equal)
- low CPU overhead due to an intelligent controller with DMA
- requires smarter hardware due to peer-to-peer design
- heavily standardized protocols for storage, audio, video.
USB:- host-device design - devices can only talk to host, not each other
- higher CPU overhead since the host controller is relatively dumb
- really inexpensive hardware (both host and device), ideal for low-cost devices
- standardized protocols for pretty much everything, but particularly human interface devices
Firewire is well-suited to audio/video applications and storage, since those applications require heavy throughput, which would severely tax the CPU when using USB.USB is well-suited to low-speed devices like keyboards, mice, and inexpensive still cameras, scanners, and other consumer devices, since cost is the primary factor in their design.
Just my $0.02.
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