USB cabling has become common place on PCs, laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, printers, flash drives and external storage devices among other peripherals. Wireless USB is a purpose-built technology designed to operate at good performance for consumer and small office, home office (SOHO) environments while addressing cabling management issues. Wireless USB is based on USB 2.0 that operates at up to 480Mb/sec at distances of 3 meters or 120Mb/sec at 10 meters.
Wireless USB addresses short-distance cabling complexities as opposed to being a general purpose network like WiFi. Wireless USB has industry heavy weights behind the movement including Agere Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., NEC Corp., Philips Electronics NV and Samsung Corp. to leverage "Ultra-Wideband " (UWB) to reduce the number of radio transmitters and to reduce cost while driving up volume that are essential to meet the mass market needs.
Jeff Ravencraft of the Wireless USB industry forum and a technology strategist for Intel Corp. see's the sweet spot for Wireless USB in consumer and SOHO environments for attachment of USB-based storage, MP3, digital cameras and other peripherals. Security features of wireless USB include encryption, along with mechanisms to assure affinity between a computer and peripherals. Look for wireless USB to appear in PC, Laptop, external hard disk drive, MP3 or other peripherals over the next couple of years along with adapters to retrofit existing USB-enabled devices.
According to Rajeev Bhardwai, director of Cisco's storage product marketing, the reasons for using wireless networking transport technologies are varied and include cable management, last-mile issues or limited availability of other networking bandwidth. Bhardwai see's the flexibility of IP-based networks to support storage applications using NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) over various underlying network transports including wireless as a benefit to address different customer needs. For example, Bhardwai see's the operational flexibility of wireless storage to be deployed where a customer many not have access to dedicated fiber optic or copper electrical cabling as an example of leveraging IP-based networks for storage applications.
At wireless networking manufacturer Proxim Wireless Corp., a subsidiary of Terabeam Wireless, systems engineering manager Allen DesJardins says that there are many organizations using wireless-based technologies for storage applications , however, for security and privacy purposes most of those organizations prefer to keep what they are doing quiet.
Steinbach Credit Union Inc., in Steinbach Manitoba, Canada, has been levering a wireless IP network based upon microwave equipment from Proxim for data mirroring and replication for several years to span distances between sites for remote data replication (see: "Canadian credit union installs wireless SAN link"). Allen is bullish on wireless network transports however cautions that given the flexibility, there are some caveats including the need for a tower, tall building or hill top to mount antennas as well as balancing distance vs. bandwidth tradeoffs. The most common uses from a storage applications perspective of wireless network transport that Allen sees are remote data mirroring, replication and remote backup or electronic vaulting.
Tom Becchetti, an IT architect for a Midwest financial services firm, see's many places for un-plugged, wireless storage and data access as a productivity aid as well as a management tool. Becchetti sees how WiFi can be used for general network access in the office place, as well as to replace cabling associated with server and storage management networks with appropriate levels of security. On the emerging technology front, Becchetti suggests a role for RFID could be to manage IT assets including printers, servers, network switches, storage as well as removable media for inventory and asset tracking purposes. While wireless USB may eventually have a place in the enterprise, Becchetti concurs with Ravencraft that the sweet spot will be consumer, SOHO and remote or branch office deployments.
Some general considerations and caveats pertaining to wireless storage include:
- Security including encryption and access control mechanisms
- Performance with an emphasis on latency in addition to bandwidth
- Full-duplex or half-duplex modes of operations to balance performance vs. cost
- What performance is supported over what distances
- Shared transport that supports multiple protocols or technology specific to certain functions
- How transparent is the technology to applications and other networking components
There is a practical catch to going completely wireless and un-tethered and that is the need for power as even batteries need recharging at some point. However, for addressing data portability and mobility, overcoming last-mile networking limitations and to simplify cable management, wireless access for storage in some shape or form will be in your future either at home, in the work and perhaps both.
About the author: Greg Schulz is founder and Sr. Analyst of the StorageIO group as well as the author of the book "Resilient Storage Networks" (Elsevier).