30 Days of Innovation

Networking and storage at CES 2011: Faster, more connected

Knowing I was going to Las Vegas for CES, my friends said, "Have fun!" The truth is, friends, fun, whether or not the kind that stays in Las Vegas, is not the first thing one can expect from covering CES. It's always a lot of work.

I did have fun seeing my colleagues all in one place, however, especially those from the East Coast, whom I don't get to see very often. Now that we've all returned home or are on the way back, here are the things in the networking and storage categories that are sticking with me from the show.

In the networking department, faster is the main theme, and this is true for both wireless and powerline networking. Powerline networking is now pumped up to support 500Mbps by adhering to the latest IEEE 1901 standard (up from the 200Mbps of the HomePlug AV standard). There were several 500Mbps powerline products announced at CES this year, such as the Trendnet TPL 401E and Netgear's XAVB5004.

Networking vendors also introduced the first hybrid wireless routers that have built-in support for powerline technology, such as the WNXR200 from Netgear.

Wireless networking this year is seeing many vendors moving to the three-stream standard that offers a throughput speed of up to 450Mbps (as opposed to the 300Mbps of the popularly used dual-stream standard). Examples of these are Netgear with the WNDR4000, Trendnet with the TEW-692GR, and D-Link with its HD Media routers.

On the client side, the three-stream wireless standard is supported by Intel's Centrino N-5300 and Centrino N-6300 Wi-Fi adapters. These two Wi-Fi chipsets, also known as Intel's Ultimate N Wi-Fi Link family, can handle all standards of Wi-Fi, including the three-stream standard. Trendnet also released the first 450Mbps gaming adapter. In the future, networking vendors will also release USB adapters that support this higher speed.

D-Link's HD Media routers, by the way, are the first that sport an SD card reader, and some of them are also the first with built-in USB 3.0 to support faster network storage performance.

Speaking of USB 3.0, most storage vendors have now moved to this standard for their external drives. This is a natural move, as USB 3.0 offers a speed that's easily 10 times that of USB 2.0 and is backward-compatible with all previous versions of USB standards. External drives are now also getting tinier, and many of them now are also based on solid-state drives. Examples of these are the GoFlex Slim from Seagate, Verbatim's Titan XS, and the i-Disk Rex 100 from Pretec.… Read more

Fuel cell portable charger works, still needs more work

LAS VEGAS--I had some hands-on experience with the Mobion Fuel Cell Generator in December and decided to bring it with me to CES 2011 with the intention of using it as the only charger for my iPhone 4 and seeing how this green technology would work out.

In case you're anxious, it worked out OK, though not perfectly.

Prior to the trip, MTI Micro, the device's maker, told me that while the generator itself would pose no problem, the fuel cell cartridge, which contains the fuel liquid, has not been approved to be included with carry-on luggage so … Read more

Clear 4G+ Mobile Series S USB modem delivers

LAS VEGAS--I reviewed the Clear 4G+ Mobile Series S USB modem right before the holidays, and people have been asking me how it performs outside of the San Francisco Bay Area (CNET's home base). CES 2011 seemed like the perfect opportunity to find out.

Las Vegas during CES is congested, both in terms of traffic and cellular signals. There are hundreds of thousands of people here in the city, each with at least one Internet-connected handheld device. These devices connect to the Net via 3G, 4G, or GPRS (or Edge) signal. If you want to know how a cell … Read more

Pretec announces tiny USB 3.0 flash drives

LAS VEGAS--It seems that portable hard drives get progressively smaller as CES 2011 continues.

Yesterday, Verbatim introduced the USB 3.0 External SSD, which beat the recently reviewed LaCie FastKey both in terms of storage space and portability. Now, as the show is nearing its end, Pretec, a company known more as a maker of system memory, has unveiled an ultracompact USB 3.0 flash drive of its own, the i-Disk Rex 100.

Measuring 2.9 inches by 0.7 inch by 0.2 inch, the i-Disk Rex 100 is arguably the tiniest flash drive in the world that offers … Read more

CES: Seagate demos Momentus XT hybrid drive

LAS VEGAS--Since the review of the Seagate Momentus XT, the first and only mass-produced solid-state hybrid hard drive on the market, I've received many e-mails asking when computer makers will start building it into machines. I have the answer now.

At CES 2011, Seagate demoed the performance of the 7200rpm Momentum XT drive against a regular 5400rpm hard drive. The demonstration was done with two Asus laptops with exactly the same specs, other than the main hard drives.

The demo consists of a script that automatically executed a series of tasks as soon as the computers booted up and … Read more

Amimon demos WHDI connectivity's full potential

LAS VEGAS--Amimon, which is the strongest supporter of the Wireless Home Digital Interface display standard and announced the Asus WAVI earlier this week, demoed at CES 2011 a variety of solutions through which WHDI-enabled devices could potentially change the way we interact with indoor entertainment.

Similar to Intel's WiDi and Sibeam's WirelessHD, WHDI is a technology that allows devices to connect to a HDMI TV wirelessly and transmit audio and video at full HD quality (1080p). The strength of WHDI is the fact that it has almost no latency and, therefore, other than high-def movies, enables interactive applications, … Read more

Hands-on with the Marvell HyperDuo hybrid storage controller

LAS VEGAS--Marvell announced its new storage controller this week that combines a regular hard-disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state drive (SSD) to create a hybrid storage solution designed to offer SSD-like performance while retaining the capacity benefits of traditional hard drives.

Intrigued by the idea, I visited the company's demonstration today and found it indeed intriguing and at the same time practical.

At the demo, Marvel used a controller card, powered by its HyperDuo chip, that has two SATA 6Gbps ports. This card is similar to any PCIe SATA controller cards you find on the market. The difference is, … Read more

CES: D-Link launches USB 3.0 HD media routers

LAS VEGAS--Media streaming, both locally and online, has been getting more and more popular. It doesn't matter what service you use or what player you have, what you see on the TV or computer screen has to go through your home router.

D-Link has that in mind and announced at CES 2011 HD media routers that it claims offer much better audio and video streaming, even when dealing with huge files of 1080p content.

These routers are all DLNA certified and incorporate a Quality of Service (QoS) engine, called HD Fuel technology, that prioritizes high-definition video streaming with services … Read more

Sibeam's 60GHz-based WirelessHD widely adopted

LAS VEGAS--In the world of wireless display technology, so far we have WHDI with the Asus Wavi, and Intel's WiDi with the Netgear Push2TV or the D-Link MainStage. All of these devices allow for displaying high-quality audio and video from your laptop, desktop, or even a media player to a TV, wirelessly.

Now, however, if you want the devices to share more than just an audio and a video signal, but also data or the connection to the Internet, you'll want to consider a third technology, called WirelessHD, which uses the 60GHz frequency band.

Unlike WHDI or WiDI, … Read more

CES: D-Link joins WiDi wireless display crowd

LAS VEGAS--You've heard of Netgear's new Push2TV HD--now there's competition.

D-Link announced at CES 2011 that it supports Intel's Wireless Display technology, known as WiDi, with a first product called the MainStage.

Like all WiDi-based accessories, the MainStage allows people to instantly display a laptop's (and even some desktops') screen on the big TV.

Supporting the next generation of WiDi, the MainStage is very similar to Netgear's Push2TV HD. According to Daniel Kelly, D-Link associate vice president of marketing, the reason D-Link waited until now to support WiDi is because this technology is … Read more