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Wi-Fi continues its progress into just about every gadget in the home, with the release of Wi-Fi Direct, a peer-to-peer mode that will increase the standard's ability to create ad hoc connections, like Bluetooth, and will make it easier for manufacturers to incorporate wireless capabilities into a wide range of devices. Of course, one of the products that increasingly sports Wi-Fi is the smartphone, and Marvell is extending the usefulness of this still further, incorporating its 'personal hotspot' technology into a phone rather than a separate device.

Wi-Fi Direct, announced this week by the Wi-Fi Alliance, is also significant because it shows the industry body releasing de facto standards of its own, with no reference to the IEEE process (of course it has been certifying products for the draft 802.11n platform for a long time, but this was with a view to converging with the full IEEE standard eventually). The new extension to 802.11 will appear in hardware in mid-2010.

Wi-Fi Direct will allow any device to advertise itself as a Wi-Fi access point for peer-to-peer usage. It is backwards compatible with 802.11a and 802.11g, and products with those connections will see the Direct device as a software access point. Some newer hardware will be able to support Direct with just a firmware upgrade. Supporting equipment will be able to maintain a WLan connection to an access point while also creating a peer-to-peer link (not requiring a formal AP).

This could reach a printer, mouse or keyboard, or someone else's PC or phone for ad hoc communications. The most immediate uses are seen as printing, file transfers or synchronization, but with the craze for social networking is coming increasing use of ad hoc wireless in phones and laptops to identify and connect with people in the vicinity, to chat or exchange files such as songs.

Wi-Fi has had an ad hoc mode before, but this has been weak compared to Bluetooth's, and never included in the main, certifiable Wi-Fi standard. Like most true ad hoc technologies, it has been weak in security and throughput. Direct, then, offers a halfway house, based on a software AP that mimics the functions of full infrastructure. The Alliance says it will be able to use the full bandwidth of 802.11n and also support WPA2 encryption and WPS secure key handling. It can also be seen and potentially shut down by enterprise APs, in order to be "enterprise acceptable".

Intel has leapt to support the new specification, saying it would be incorporated into the chip giant's My WiFi personal area network. Atheros can also convert its Direct Connect mode to the new standard.

Meanwhile, Marvell is pushing the use of mobile devices as portable, personal hotspots. Dedicated devices to achieve this have been gaining ground, as carriers drop their hostility to gadgets that allow several people to share a cellular connection, which in effect backhauls a Wi-Fi hub. The Novatel MiFi system, which uses Marvell's technology, is now offered by several operators including Verizon Wireless.

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