Why has it taken so long for someone to finalise this?!?

[AndyO]

http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/rele...leFreeUSB.html

I've been looking for a wireless USB hub for some time but this is the first one I've found...I know its not that long since WUSB was finalised as a spec, but surely this is the sort of thing that so STUPIDLY useful that it would be worth manufacturers firing out units even with incomplete specs?

I'm not very technical so is the difficulty in getting the high data rates required? Why isn't there a product that provides a Wireless LAN-based USB hub?

Any thoughts from other cablephobes?

[autopilot]

Been looking forward to this for a while. Finally i can hide my ugly printer and other things

[AndyO]

Hehe, just seen

http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4466

Didn't spot this through Hexus when I last looked!

[shaithis]

Supply, demand and cost.

Wireless USB? Doesn't that mean a battery per device?

I, like many others, detest wireless devices because of the battery issue. I much prefer a cable....in fact with USB, many devices drew their power from the USB hub, something a wireless system cannot do.

Sure for some it's handy but for most its an unnecessary cost and inconvenience

[AndyO]

Why couldn't the hub be powered?

I don't see this as in any way reducing the number of cables, just letting you shift a bunch of them away from your PC

I just think it would be great for the likes of keeping a printer and scanner in a cupboard out of the way, or parking (if it was powered) your webcam elsewhere - purely for peripheral relocation.

In fact given the meter-plus length of most USB cables, the area around one of these little things is likely to be a total mess

[b0redom]

Presumably you could stack this with other USB2 hubs and have an uberhub then? I'd be interested to know if you could have more than one USB client fob to share printers/scanners etc.

Tom

[arthurleung]

They need to take care of interference first. And also since USB is plug-n-play I don't think its a good idea to plug a webcam in and find out your neighbour is "using" your webcam to look at you.

[AndyO]

Hehe, valid point but I'd certainly hope that there would be some reasonable encryption available between the dongle and the hub?!

Obviously some over-zealous mathematician will crack it but you're clealry not going to be watching Mrs J Bloggs in her nighty THAT easily.

[b0redom]

*Shudder* didn't think of that. It can't be that difficult though, there's already something very similar with Bluetooth. With this, communication wouldn't even need to be standards based.

Tom

[arthurleung]

*Shudder* didn't think of that. It can't be that difficult though, there's already something very similar with Bluetooth. With this, communication wouldn't even need to be standards based.

Tom

If you consider how many people have INSECURE wifi network, you can know what will happen if people can have access to your FLASH DRIVE, WEBCAM, and most importantly your KEYBOARD! If they can't secure a wifi network, how can they secure a wireless USB connection?

Imagine someone's keyboard was typing on your computer, and you aint got a password, he could guess like (double tab choose username, press enter to login, run cmd, run share folder command, run ping or whatever to your computer to show what is his ip, etc. Or even nastier, encrypt all files, then change the password). Its doable, back 5 years ago when I broke my monitor(desktop) I used similar way to get my laptop to terminal service in just by typing commands...

For wireless network you still need to login to the computer (or have limited access to shared folders) to open important(or not) files. But if you got USB storage over wireless it will be even worse, because USB got no security at all!