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New IrDA Spec Shoots for 100Mbit/s Data Rate
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DeviceForge, the Infrared Data Association has adopted a new high speed IR communications protocol. This new protocol promises to deliver possible speed up to 100Mbit/s transfer rates. From the article: 'Of note, existing IrDA-enabled devices can be upgraded to the new protocol, thus offering the opportunity to accelerate the IrDA data transfer rates of devices in the field via a software update.'"
You can't snoop on it (so easily). In secure establishments bluetooth is a liability.
In secure establishments any portable device capable of being used for removing or adding new data bypassing the security is a liability, whether it's done using irda, bluetooth, cable, or pen and paper - i don't think the poor encryption of bluetooth is the issue.
I miss line of sight communications. Now I can see that when the range is measured in miles or 10s of yards line of site is probably a real issue, but when its measured in feetor inches its actually really neat.
Bluetooth is cool, I wouldn't want a LOS headset, or xbox controller and it is cool being able to sync or connect to your phone whilst its still in your pocket. But handshaking is a PITA. Say a friend of mine wants to send me a photo from his groovy new phone to my apple. I can do it with bluetooth, but I have to pair it first (grrrr). In the bad old days of ir, all he had to do was point his phone at my laptop press send, then I accepted the transmission and it magically appeared on my desktop. Sweet.
For fast, one time transmission, this technology could really make life easier. You don't have to know what WLAN to connect to, you don't have pair, you don't have to worry about firewalls or connection settings or network contention. You just fire and forget. Its not replacement for bluetooth, its complimentary.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Ok, long time reader, first time poster, great website love the topic....
Infra red communication holds a lot of promise for small portable devices. Yes, it is line of site, but that is an advantage for secure connections. So and so on the street can't hack your pda while it's in your pocket, for instance.
Another advantage is the low power consumption. The led's used for this convert >99% of the electricity put into them into usable light. (real world performance for the system might vary) I don't know what the efficiency is for blue tooth, but I would be surprised if it's that good for ANY rf based device.
I have used ir on my palm device and it works great (if slow thanks to the UART limit). Simple and efficient. Point and send. Wouldn't use it to surf the internet for any long period of time, but I wouldn't want to on a device that small anyway. (no screen real estate)