galvin schlepp: WiFi alliance begins Tunneled Direct Link Setup certification, hopes to improve media streaming

Monday, August 27, 2012

WiFi alliance begins Tunneled Direct Link Setup certification, hopes to improve media streaming

You can thank the WiFi alliance for a number of things, and soon you can add TDLS to that list. That's Tunneled Direct Link Setup, if you were wondering, and it's a standard for creating direct links between devices. If this sounds familiar, that's understandable, but TDLS has its own tricks, like working in the background of a network to optimize performance, and it can even work over a WiFi Direct connection. For example two compliant devices can measure the signal strength on the network, and determine if a direct link would be better or not. TDLS also allows devices to communicate at the fastest standard available (802.11b / g / n etc.) even if this is superior to that available on the rest of your hardware. As this is a client-based protocol, you won't need to upgrade your access point either. If this hasn't got implications for better media streaming written all over it, we don't know what has. Especially as the certification is available to TVs, tablets, phones, cameras and gaming devices. There's only a handful of test products sporting the official approval at this time, but with names such as Broadcom, Marvell and Realtek in the mix, it shouldn't be long before it starts finding its way into front rooms and pockets proper.

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Filed under: Wireless, Internet