The WiFi Alliance has finally certified ” WiGig , ” a high-speed, 60 GHz standard otherwise known as 802.11ad. Using beamforming, it can yield speeds of up to 8 Gbps, or nearly 1GB per second from a distance of up to 10 meters. As many as 180 million devices using the standard, like routers, laptops and smartphones will arrive by the end of next year, the group said. It also unveiled the first five certified WiGig products from Intel, Dell and Qualcomm, among others. The WiFi Alliance notes that the new standard operates in the “less congested” 60 GHz spectrum, which should aid speeds. It says that manufacturers can implement “handoff” technology so that your phone and router will automatically switch to 2.4 or 5 GHz WiFi if you leave the room, for instance. Samsung, among others, has already released uncertified WiGig devices. 8 Gbps is around three times faster than the best 802.11ac routers can do right now. However, in the real world, most current devices can only hit 600 Mbps or so, less than a fifth of the theoretical maximum in some cases. In theory, 802.11ad should be faster, thanks to the beamforming and distance limitation, but you’ve essentially got to be in the same room as the router to benefit from such speeds. Of course, your smartphone or laptop would have to support the standard too, not just the router. Qualcomm’s WiGig video from CES 2016 Nevertheless, if the new standard can do even 20 percent of the promised speeds, it’ll be useful in a lot of cases. If you usually work from the same room and transfer files around your network, for instance, you’ll no longer need a wired gigabit connection. And folks with Google Fiber or other high-speed internet services should get faster wireless speeds — my router and smartphone combination limits me to 200 Mbps, for instance, while my laptop gets 1 Gbps via wired ethernet. The first mobile device to carry the standard is the Dell Latitude E7450/70, and both Intel and Qualcomm have certified router solutions. Expect a flood of devices to carry the standard soon, including smartphones, tablets, and notebooks. By next year, many will probably factor the standard into their “buy” decisions. Source: WiFi Alliance
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WiGig will bring superfast WiFi to devices next year
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: A Wi-Fi router manufactured and sold only in China can easily run for the title of “most insecure router ever made.” The BHU router, whose name translates to “Tiger Will Power, ” has a long list of security problems that include: four authentication bypass flaws (one of which is just hilarious); a built-in backdoor root account that gets created on every boot-up sequence; the fact that it opens the SSH port for external connections after every boot (somebody has to use that root backdoor account right?); a built-in proxy server that re-routes all traffic; an ad injection system that adds adverts to all the sites you visit; and a backup JS file embedded in the router firmware if the ad script fails to load from its server. For techies, there’s a long technical write-up, which gets funnier and scarier at the same time as you read through it. “An attacker authenticating on the router can use a hardcoded session ID (SID) value of 700000000000000 to gain admin privileges, ” reports Softpedia. “If he misspells the SID and drops a zero, that’s no problem. The BHU router will accept any value and still grant the user admin rights.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Everyone remembers those classic blue Linksys routers of yore, so while the Linksys WRT1900AC may exude nostalgia , its technology is all brand new. Read more… 
