John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

World Without Wires: Wi-Fi Alliance Endorses WiGig

The Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that certifies the wireless industry standard, said this morning that it is allying with Wireless Gigabit Alliance to promote WiGig, a new short-range wireless specification capable of delivering data speeds of up to seven gigabits per second in the 60GHz band.

That’s about 10 times faster than Wi-Fi, which operates in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. And it’s fast enough to stream high-definition video without the need for HDMI or DisplayPort connections–assuming your video source and monitor are close to each another, preferably in the same room.

Though WiGig can carry a lot of data, its range is significantly shorter than Wi-Fi N, the latest iteration of the Wi-Fi specification. And it doesn’t handle obstructions nearly so well. Which is why the announcement of today’s Wi-Fi Alliance agreement likely heralds a tri-band Wi-Fi standard, one that would use 60GHz WiGig–or a similar technology like WirelessHD (said to support speeds of 10-28Gbps) when it is available and fall back on slower, longer-range Wi-Fi connections in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands when it isn’t.

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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