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.'"

Comments

Good, but...

[Poromenos1]

Although it's quite fast it's still line-of-sight, and very short range. So, what can I do with this, transfer 12.5 MB/sec off my mobile phone? To connect my PCs I have wifi or LAN, I wouldn't use IrDA anyway for that.

Re:Good, but...

[MountainMan101]

You can't snoop on it (so easily). In secure establishments bluetooth is a liability.

Er, no.

[richie2000]

TFA states that the faster protocol that older devices can be firmware-upgraded to (IrSimple) is just a regular 4mbps Fast IrDA version with less overhead. The VFIR (16 mbps) and UFIR (100 mbps) protocols in development will surpass current hardware capabilities and current devices cannot be upgraded to them.

Now, although the editor may feel that the submitter knows more about a subject field than he (or she), just a cursory glance through the linked main article to see how well it jives with the write-up should be in order. I'm just saying'.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can stream Video from my remote control ! Take that TV !

Multiplex more tv channels

[LiquidCoooled]

Now I can talk to my tv at 100mpbs I can change channels much quicker and theoretically watch more channels at once.

(for all those people who flick backwards and forewards between 2 channels watching both programs - TV watching for the multitasking generation)

Re:Current Speed?

[Avtar]

IrDa can manage serial port speed, 128Kb. Bluetooth V1 can transfer data at 1Mb and Bluetooth v2 can transfer data at 2Mb

I think this is quite cool

[el_womble]

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.