News

Still no "internet doorbell" from Linksys; but CeBIT will see everything else

Broadcom isn't the only supplier of wireless hardware to Linksys; but when Broadcom announced a super-speed 802.11g chip set, it wasn't hard to guess that Linksys would come out with a range of 11g wireless routers that could exploit it. It looks like it will appear at CeBIT in Hannover.

Most consumer markets will be more interested in the "toys" that Linksys will be revealing. Like that £80 disk controller, or the HiFi WiFi audio system, or the Internet camera ...

The video streaming MediaLink will impress a lot of buyers; but techno fans will be more interested in getting a Wireless-G router which can handle a "real world throughput" of around 30 or more megabits per second.

Marketing boss Mike Wagner, in the UK for a Linksys sales meeting tonight, said that the growth of wireless LANs in the UK was astonishing. He said: "We have research from Del 'Oro showing that there were two million wireless LANs sold in the UK in 2002 and that this figure grew to 4,809,900 in 2003. That's 111% growth but we're now predicting that it will hit eight million by the end of this year."

The Broadcom technology which shot Linksys to the number one slot in wireless LANs last year, when they were first out with the pre-standard version of 802.11g, now allows them to offer "SuperBoost 11g" products, which are not getting the extra throughput from channel bonding tricks.

Instead, quality-of-service firmware allows a 30% speed increase, or more, using any of the 13 802.11 channels - even if someone in the area is using an old 11b device. Many systems get dual-802.11g speeds but they're restricted to channel 6, and they slow down to standard speeds if a conventional system is being used in range.

It's essentially the same router as the WRT54G product but with an "S" on the end, for superboost.

The result is that the legendary "internet doorbell" which was first dreamed up by Andy Hopper, now becomes real. A wireless video camera, with its IP address tracked by dynamic DNS, will allow you to watch whoever comes to your front door - even if you happen to be a mile or a thousand miles away - in a window on your PC. An audio link allows you to speak to them, and hear their response.

The camera was always sold in America only; but the arrival of the 11g version will see it launched into Europe.

The audio MediaLink is also 11b only; it will be joined by a video Medialink, using 11g high speed wireless. Unfortunately, it isn't capable of doing what I particularly want - playing the same media stream in two rooms in synch. But it is a nice toy, for £79 inc VAT, because it doesn't need a PC to work.

The idea is that you can control the MediaLink entirely from its own infra-red remote control (ironic!) and surf the network for Internet radio stations, as long as your wireless router is switched on and connected to the Web. The audio can come out of speakers hung onto the side of the MediaLink, or into a hifi stereo system via standard jacks.

My own favourite, however, is the only non-wireless toy on the list. Almost all of the new devices have the option of working on wired Ethernet; but the one that has to be on wired, is the disk controller.

This lets you have two USB hard disks on the network as network attached storage. Plug in a £99 USB hard drive, and the unit provides all network control functions: a web server, a Linux server, directory structure, and even working backup software. Can connect two hard drives. Couple this with a wireless MediaLink, and you can play back all your network MP3 music even when your PC is switched off, straight from the hard disks.

This is full 10/100/1000 megabit speed. It's also password protected access control for both individual users and for user groups.

And I'd expect Cisco Voice offer IP (VoIP) technology to be embedded in the thing within a year, but that is only a guess on my own part.

Finally, CeBIT will see the announcement of a print server; a £120 wired and wireless device which will drive USB 2.0 printers, as well as parallel port devices.

We'll review the hardware as soon as it ships.