Wireless USB Catches up with USB 2.0 in Speed

Our avid readers (and peripheral manufacturers) should be delighted to see this headline: WUSB finally beginning to match USB 2.0 performance. NEC's the one to deliver the good news at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Fall 2008. While the system is still a prototype, it did prove that with "native" host and firmware improvement effective speed can top 200Mbit/s or 25MByte/s, at which speed most would find acceptable for general use. Of course, you would need to have a "native" WUSB mass storage as well to reach this transfer rate; unfortunately, no one has announced such retail product yet. NEC exhibited a similar setup that performed at 130Mbit/s at last year's IDF. Wireless USB promises 480Mbit/s at distance up to 3m and 110Mbit/s at up to 10m. NEC didn't say the effective range, hopefully somewhere near 5m - the max. cable length of a USB 2.0 cable.