The fledgling wireless technology WiGig passed an important milestone last week with the official release of the technology's specifications, giving member companies the green light to start building products based on the protocol. We've taken a look at what WiGig could mean to you.
Will WiGig make surfing the internet faster?
WiGig focuses on faster data transfer speeds between devices. WiGig is not a standard for the actual internet service that comes into your home.
So even if you have a superfast WiGig router, your new connection speeds would only be noticeable when transferring data between WiGig-enabled devices on your home network, and not between your computer and the internet.
How fast is WiGig?
The WiGig specification will allow for wireless multigigabit data transfer at speeds of up to seven Gigabits-per-second or more, which is ten times faster than current Wi-Fi speeds.
To give you an idea of how fast that is, one hour of high-definition video can take up to 45 minutes to transfer over current Wi-Fi, but a WiGig connection can cut down the transfer time for that same one-hour HD video to less than a minute, according to WiGig representatives.
Who is supporting multi-gigabit wireless?
Right now, major technology firms like Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia and many others are part of the WiGig alliance.
When will multigigabit devices hit store shelves?
Devices that support the new 60GHz multigigabit wireless standard are expected to become available by 2011 or 2012.
There's no word on cost or how widely available the technology will be.
Is my 802.11n laptop going to be obsolete?
No. One of the goals of the new agreement between the Wi-Fi Alliance and the WiGig Alliance is to make sure that a majority of the coming multigigabit devices will be backward compatible with 802.11n devices.
How far will a WiGig signal reach?
When 60GHz devices first launch, you can expect them to have a relatively small range - about the length of the average living room.
By comparison, Wi-Fi can travel over 100 yards or more.
Are there competing 60GHz standards?
One competitor to the WiGig Alliance is the WirelessHD specification supported by the WirelessHD Consortium, which includes WiGig supporters like Intel, as well as companies like Panasonic, Samsung and Sony.
Like WiGig, WirelessHD is also capable of transferring audio and video signals, as well as data transfer between computers.
The WirelessHD Consortium claims its multigigabit standard can transfer data at speeds of up to 10Gbps at a maximum distance of 32 feet, compared to WiGig's maximum speed of 7Gbps.
What's not clear, however, is whether WirelessHD and WiGig will end up in a format war to decide which standard will win out as the multigigabit wireless standard, or whether the two can coexist.
Xavier Ortiz, an analyst for technology market research firm ABI Research, recently told PC Advisor's sister title Computerworld that WiGig and WirelessHD may avoid a format war if WiGig became the standard for data transfer between computers, while WirelessHD focused on wireless connectivity between televisions, disc players and other home theater equipment.
Whether proponents for WirelessHD and WiGig share Ortiz's sentiments for coexistence remains to be seen.
See also: Five technologies that will change the face of IT
- We look at the official specifications from the Wireless GigaBit Alliance
- Will WiGig make surfing the internet faster
Comments
sirjohng said: Perhaps we can have a two speed internet one for the junk and one for the serious stuff It is brilliant thinking that you download your movie at 2Mbps min goverment standard sic and then transfer it across you house at 1Gbps
Nev said: Products based on the new standard arent expected to hit store shelves until 2010 Perhaps a typo or is development continuing at a super fast pace -
Techie said: Hardware aside software isnt up to standard either or the internet that is packed full of social networking junk thats clogging up the data arteries and costing the new tech market a fortune to solve the problem of keeping us at the speed we are now instead of that technology freeing us into a new age of performanceWhat these groups should be investing in is a form of dredger for the internet to get rid of fly-tipping user and sites and free the internet up for better thingsI know this falls off subject but the internet is getting packed with junk like a computer with too much software the internet needs a clean reinstall to be emptied so all this new tech can be of use because if you take away the junk you wont have the stupid people using it to look and add more junk and the internet can then be rebuilt with all our current major wants and demands in mind a perfect marriage of information software and hardware
alan14 said: It is possible but not with domestic kitYou can write to an SSD with RAID1 at huge speeds I reckon in 45 seconds you could write around 15Gb of data which is about 2 hours of divX movie
Cool said: A movie in 45 second now thats impossibleeven a direct Ethernet on copying that much over a hardrive is possibleWhat a load of bull