Faster Wireless Multimedia Streaming

prostoalex writes "The Wi-Fi Alliance approved Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) technology that allows packet prioritisation to the multimedia data streamed wireless LANs. Broadcom already announced that one of their access points and one reference design are WMM-certified. Other news outlets report that WMM will accelerate Wi-Fi adoption in consumer electronics and mobile devices."

Comments

This will work great with multicasting

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone ever actually supports that.

WiFi everything!

[chrispyman]

This really doesn't sound like anything that revolutionary, just another hack to speed up "multimedia" data on a WLAN. But the real interesting part is how they expect to put WiFi in, well, everything. Now I certainly have nothing against WiFi'ing everything, but I do worry that with so much WiFi, you could have some interfearence issues (much like UTexas had), and then you still have the problem that you loose pretty much all data security. Perhaps when they figure out a way to have WiFi APs automatically select the least used channel to reduce interfearance and they add in a good, strong, automatic, and mandatory encryption then perhaps we'll be seeing less ethernet ports and more WiFi antennas in products.

Apple and Slim on the ball

[for_usenet]

This is excellent - with the Slim MP3 player and Apple's Airport express base station starting this trend off, hopefully, we will get more devices with more cool features, and all (hopefully) playing nice with each other.

I wonder if the ad for the job posting at Apple that appeared here a few weeks ago will be impacted by this at all. In any case, I am looking forward to integrating my A/V system into my computer, and get rid of a ton of wires, all in one swell foop !! ;-)

Good point

[jeffs72]

I didn't even think about that, but I imagine that a G type device can put out a pretty good sound broadcast, with prioritization (QoS in disguise) going on. Now compound that with phones or pdas that can read that signal and have a player that knows what to do with it. Now combine that setup that works for a few hundred feet with any of the plethora of ways to boost wifi signal strenght and you've got independent radio stations that can reach a real quantity of subscribers. For free (except equipment, since I believe it's been established that internet radio is license free as long as the broadcaster owns the original song he/she's playing).

The RIAA is gonna shit

Speed is nice, but ...

[drsmack1]

My customers want RANGE. I need to be able to cover a large home with one AP (placed where ever it is most convenient) and cover the house and yard.

Re:QoS?

[ElForesto]

That was my first thought. It seems that companies these days are really eager to make up some new certification that's really a technology that's been around for years.