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Wireless Networking Hardware

Faster Wireless Multimedia Streaming 46

Posted by michael from the wireless-everything dept.
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."
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Faster Wireless Multimedia Streaming More

Faster Wireless Multimedia Streaming

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  • This will work great with multicasting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:46PM (#10217412)
    If anyone ever actually supports that.

  • QoS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeffs72 ( 711141 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:47PM (#10217426) Homepage Journal

    Isn't this just Quality of Service? Surely any decent wireless router manufacturer that doesn't already support QoS could add it with a firmware update. Or is this another scheme to get me to buy new wireless routing gear (first b, then g, now WMM)?

    What am I missing here

    • i've got a linksys wrt54g with upgraded firmware from these guys [sveasoft.com], but the QOS stuff is pretty lacking... i'd like to see a better interface on it.

      but at least it's a step in the right direction.

      i'd have to agree that this just sounds like a gimmick to upgrade your hardware when really all it takes is a firmware update.

    • Re:QoS? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ElForesto ( 763160 ) <.elforesto. .at. .gmail.com.> on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:00PM (#10217904) Homepage
      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.
    • Can't be too sure about it, but prima facie it seems that this WMM thing is not a change at the physical level (which means it is not a new addition to the b,g,a .. series). The change is most probably at the MAC level/network management level which again should not lead to buying of new equipment. Its just got to do with providing a higher priority to streaming to ensure a better QoS.

      Well, most of technologies do provide a higher priorty for streaming anyways, so essentially what is unclear is how much of

  • The RIAA? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tajmorton ( 806296 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:52PM (#10217462) Homepage
    I wonder what the RIAA/MPAA will have to say about this...will they require that the streams be encrypted?

    It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with those lawyers.

    • Good point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jeffs72 ( 711141 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:59PM (#10217515) Homepage Journal

      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 [google.com] 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

    • Re:The RIAA? (Score:5, Funny)

      by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @06:15PM (#10217614) Homepage Journal
      They are going to impose restrictions on the laws of physics, especially those concerning propagation of radio waves, that requires said waves to cease to exist after seven days.
      • Would it be enough if we could guarantee that no human could ever reach those waves again after seven days?

        Heh, I can already see the headlines in a few hundred years:

        "WARP DRIVE INVENTED!"

        "RIAA demands infringing technology be placed under their control"

        Actually it really would be infringing technology, since it would allow you to "timeshift" any radio or TV transmission to any time of your liking, without even needing to record it.

    • I wonder what the RIAA/MPAA will have to say about this...will they require that the streams be encrypted?
      I haven't been keeping up with wireless security. Does 802.11g have a better security standard than WEP, which turned out to be trival to crack? If not, will the RIAA or MPAA mandate security without realizing that standard wireless security is a joke?

  • I've always wanted... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    something like this. I mean, I don't care about pulling down information, just so long as I can listen to Britney Spears live!

  • WiFi everything! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chrispyman ( 710460 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:56PM (#10217489)
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by for_usenet ( 550217 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:56PM (#10217491)
    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 !! ;-)

  • I'd be interested (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bill_Royle ( 639563 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @06:00PM (#10217530)
    I'd be interested as to how they define which packets are multimedia, and which are data/text-based. It seems to me that there would have to be some sort of identifier on each packet in order to set a priority. As such, it sounds like it could easily be streamlined into a DRM scheme, so I wouldn't think that the RIAA/MPAA would mind at all.

    Of course, I'm not a packet expert, so this ability may be available already...
    • I bet on the PC, it's a driver hook, i.e. the driver reads open file handles and if it finds a multimedia type going out over the wifi, flags it.

      Similar to how ATI's video drivers will capture any video streams being played and output them full-screen on a 2nd display automatically, with Theatre mode enabled.

      Multimedia appliances will probably always flag their data.

  • ...and what could possibly go wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by corvair2k1 ( 658439 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @06:05PM (#10217555)
    Doesn't this lead to a new type of DOS attack? Granted, this wouldn't be used in a corporate setting, but it could seriously much around with the enduser experience if all sorts of high priority packets shut off other traffic.

  • Why should I care about Broadcom? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Skraut ( 545247 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @06:13PM (#10217598) Journal
    Broadcom already announced that one of their access points and one reference design are WMM-certified.
    Wake me up when they announce support for Linux for any of their wireless cards.
    • Broadcom already announced that one of their access points and one reference design are WMM-certified.

      No kidding. But a couple of saving graces might be Atheros (Prism chipsets) and (cough) Intel (gigabit ethernet; Centrino 2100/2200), since they are part of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

  • Speed is nice, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drsmack1 ( 698392 ) * on Friday September 10, 2004 @06:13PM (#10217604)
    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:Speed is nice, but ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gaewyn L Knight ( 16566 ) <vaewyn.wwwrogue@com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @06:22PM (#10217665) Homepage Journal
      Pick up a Senao (Engenius Tech) access point... Not only are they 200mw they also have an incredibly low receive threshold.

      Place it near outside wall on the middle floor of the house and voila! Unless the house is heavy brick with rebar you'll get at least some leakage into the yard. If you need more in a certain spot place the AP with a view out the window in that direction.

      Or heck... for 50$ a piece you can get 2 APs and place one on each end of the house (vary floors for better floor coverage)
    • Wifi rollouts for corporate buildings and campuses often features dozens to hundreds of AP's. I predict it won't be long until multi-AP solutions become popular for home use; cost really isn't that high any more and it wouldn't take much software to get consumer-grade AP's to co-operate on handoffs.
    • Sick an AP in the corner of one house with a directional antenna facing toward the opposite corner. Look for wide radiation patterns.

  • Taking Back the Airwaves? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvanKai ( 218260 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @08:06PM (#10218313) Homepage
    With all the discussion about city wide WiFi networks in Grand Haven, Philadelphia, Redmond, etc and disputes over WiFi right of ways at universities [slashdot.org] and stadiums [slashdot.org], it is becoming more obvious that WiFi will be eroding the markets of tradition broadcast technologies... radio, television, cellular.

    When I was at SXSW last year, not only could you listen to the authorized SXSW iTunes playlists [wired.com], but hundreds of Mac using convention goers were sharing their playlists via Rendezvous.

    With standards like WMM and applications like Skype, have we finally taken the airwaves back?
  • Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like Pentium's MMX marketing in the mid-90's?
  • Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. Who the hell cares?

    I'm waiting for some improvements to LATENCY. Has anyone ssh'd anywhere over an 802.11b/g link? Slow as shit, unless you have some other process communicating on the same link to get those buffers flushed. I'm sure there's encryption and compression overhead, too.

    Also, reliability. A fast link doesn't do me a bit of good if it doesn't fucking work. I've been on the phone and had my access point disappear from both my laptops - hang up and it appear
    • Has anyone ssh'd anywhere over an 802.11b/g link?

      Yes. I've done it almost every day for the past few of years. There's never any noticeable lag when connecting locally. Ping times are on the order of 2-4ms. The only reliability problems I've had are when I was literally a meter or so within being totally out of range, or when my access point blew up due to a failed capacitor. I've also done a fair bit of multiplayer gaming over wifi, and never had any problems except, again, when I was nearly out of range
  • at least not 802.1p , It works on the radio level (PHY)
    http://w3.antd.nist.gov/wctg/manet/docs/VTC2003_B a ckoff.pdf
    all you have to do is make sure that multimedia sending device gets their backoff timers boundaries set lower than the rest of the wifi boxes on the channel. That way they will be the first to occupy the band if in need. Thats how Cisco handles QoS in VOIP WiFi phones of theirs. Its 100% compatible with the receiver, only transceiver has to support it.
    google has it all [google.pl]

    As some of you gue
  • Am I the only one thinking this will be DoA like WAP was for mobile devices?
  • Am I the only one who thinks WMM looks abit too much like wma or wmv, windows multi-media, or just windows media murder. Bah maybe I should just get some sleep

  • Updated WRT54G broadcom wl driver (Score:3, Interesting)

    by docstrange ( 161931 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @03:50AM (#10219769) Homepage
    If you update your linksys wrt54g to the latest firmware, and use one of the many methods out there to access the wirless driver that runs on an embedded linux os you can execute /usr/sbin/wl

    one of the supported commands returned is
    wme Set WME (Wireless Multimedia Extensions) mode (0=off, 1=on)

    I'm guessing that the included broadcom radio is the one that supports this.

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