JaypeeOnline

The Wi-Fi Alliance has recently launched a new technology called Wi-Fi Direct that will enable electronic devices and gadgets to communicate and connect to each other without the need of a network or network access point. The Wi-Fi Alliance have started certifying the first batch of gadgets with the new Wi-Fi Direct technology a couple days back. With this new technology, users can now do things like share photos with their digital cameras or play video games on their game consoles/mobile devices with their friends without a wireless hotspot or Internet connection.

Edgar Figueroa, Wi-Fi Aliance CEO brief statement on the new Wi-Fi Direct technology:

“We designed Wi-Fi Direct to unleash a wide variety of applications which require device connections, but do not need the Internet or even a traditional network.”..”Wi-Fi Direct empowers users to connect devices — when, where and how they want to — and our certification program delivers products that work well together, regardless of the brand.”

Here’s demo video of how the new Wi-Fi Direct technology works:

The Wi-Fi Direct protocol is similar with regular Wi-Fi but different in some ways because first it doesn’t require a network or network access point. Also with this new protocol, users can browse nearby Wi-Fi Direct enabled devices and connect to them with just a push of a button and have the connection automatically encrypted.

802.11n devices certified with the Wi-Fi Direct technology will be backwards compatible with existing Wi-Fi enabled devices that are no available in the market. Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Realtek and Ralink will be producing the first line of Wi-Fi Direct certified products and are expected to be in the market in time for the holidays.

WIth the introduction of Wi-Fi Direct, it can’t be helped that there are many speculations that this new technology/protocol would surpass or kill Bluetooth because it has a wider range and faster speed. However, there are certain issues in the Wi-Fi protocol like the use of a single channel, interference and Wi-Fi Direct being a software-only protocol that could prevent it from doing so. I’m not an expert in this so I’ll leave this to those who know more about it. If you want to read a side-by-side comparison of Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth 4.0, check out this post.

What do you think of the new Wi-Fi Direct technology/protocol? Do you think it would kill Bluetooth? What ways do you think the use of Wi-Fi Direct would be better or more efficient than using Bluetooth? Please share your thoughts.