Networking preview

It's all about faster and further

Networking, especially wireless networking, has been the CE darling for a while now. Manufacturers of every product category, from digital cameras to cell phones to printers, are trying to bring the obvious benefits of networking to their products. After all, it's clear that being able to stream photos and video from your PC to your home entertainment system is far preferable to burning CDs or DVDs in order to play back the media you've saved. Networking, as a category, is beginning to break down--after all, how do you categorize a network-attached storage device: storage or networking? What about a media server: networking or home entertainment device?

Pre-802.11n/Wi-Fi
Still, behind all the bells and whistles is the basic network backbone, the infrastructure on which everything else is draped. Wireless home networking, or Wi-Fi technology, is nearly ubiquitous now and not just in businesses. Residential neighborhoods are bursting with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi networks. Next on the scene for 2006: 802.11n. It's likely that the 802.11n specification will be finalized before the end of 2006. No doubt, manufacturers are waiting on tenterhooks for that spec so that they can get their gear on store shelves as quickly as possible. Until then, they (and we) will have to be satisfied with the pre-N gear that is now flooding the market. In 2005, we saw a MIMO/pre-N offering from every major vendor, such as Belkin's Pre-N and Netgear's WPN824 RangeMax routers. Just trickling in now are lower-price pre-N offerings. Vendors are trying to hit a sweet sub-$100 price point with routers that straddle the range and speed differential between 11g and the first round of pre-11n products, offering a taste of the 11n spec with a more palatable price tag. Expect to see more of the same at CES.

Home networking
We talked about home networking a lot last year, and this year it will be more of the same, though untethered from the reign of Windows Media Center. The Digital Living Network Alliance is an industry consortium that promotes a standard of interoperability between PCs and CE and mobile devices, allowing for a seamless integration of devices in the home, if it works correctly. And a recent 802.11e draft standard defines Quality of Service enhancements to 802.11, which, if implemented, could help with the quality of streaming media in the home. At CES, we expect to see all-in-one boxes that can serve up music, video, printers, and data throughout the home, to multiple users. How well they actually work, though, remains to be seen.

3G/4G data networks
Through 2005, we saw a slew of 2.5G/3G PCMCIA cards and services that brought wireless connectivity to notebooks and other CE devices such as cell phones and PDAs. The EV-DO, UMTS, and EDGE services enabled users to get online from just about anywhere. The last quarter of 2005 saw this connectivity built into notebooks. We'll likely see more of this at CES, as well as the next-gen 4G network offerings. In fact, Cingular intends to roll out HSPDA in 2006, which offers peak download speeds of 14Mbps.