Wireless USB hubs

HaggiZ writes "Here is alternative to the clutter of USB cables and keys sitting on your desk. Now Belkin has announced their own wire-free USB setup. It's a wireless USB hub, allowing your to plug devices into the hub and have your PC/laptop elsewhere and not need to worry about running cables along the livingroom or study to reach. Very handy for laptop users, I can imagine some very handy uses for so HTPCs as well. Shipping in spring for a shave under $130."

Comments

The advantage of this hub

[hellfire]

For those who don't get it, the point of the hub is to provide a place where you can plug in your scanner, printer, and other external peripherals, providing them all with wireless functionality, without the scanner and printer actually having the wireless capability built in. Makes sense for those of us with lots of USB peripherals who also have a wireless laptop.

What's a little odd is that they aren't using bluetooth, but the article claims its 100x faster than bluetooth. Perhaps this opens up the idea of plugging in hard drives into a USB hub like this, either for backup, for extra workspace, or just a great way to store your extensive mp3/movie/pr0n collection.

Why not 802.11

[slim]

It looks very handy, but why should the PC need yet another wireless interface?

Surely with a clever enough driver, you could tunnel USB traffic over 802.11 (or even over TCP/IP). Make a USB hub that provides the server for this tunnelling client, and you'd wouldn't need a dongle.

Are the Analogy Police Lurking? USB |= wheel

[postbigbang]

Take a look at the USB specs, and the number of vendors deploying them. USB devices are 'trusted' where BT devices are 'paired'. BT in its first incarnation had an operation radius of 8m. With WiFi, the operational radius, given Defcon successes, might be nearly 200km (line of sight, no sun spots, nearby Schwarzchild radius, etc). So far, 8m vs 200km. Speed in payload is about 52x, USB 2.0 vs BT 1.1 spec.

BT is really designed as a paired communications medium (with dedicated voice channel) as a PAN setup utilizing OBEX (object exchange) and a few other interesting inter-device tricks. USB is a perhipheral connector and virtualizing the electrical part through wireless is a godsend. USB is more layer 1 & 2, where BT is a full stack.