From Adhoc to Awesome… The Creation of Dual-WiFi

The most important requirements we had for the IUM Drive was for it to be portable and didn’t require any additional hardware to work. As long as your laptop was WiFi enabled, that was sufficient to pair with the IUM and start sharing files. This allowed for portable sharing as the IUM would work wherever you took your laptop.

To achieve this, we invested significantly into Research and Development (R&D) of Adhoc network connections. Adhoc networks don’t rely on existing Infrastructure (like Wireless Routers). They are created dynamically and provide point to point connectivity. We thought this was a perfect solution for us to achieve our goal for a portable solution with no additional hardware required.

Unfortunately during our testing, we realised that the WiFi chip manufacturers haven’t really invested into Adhoc networks. This is especially true with the new 802.11n networks. In fact, one WiFi chip manufacturer has actually given up on providing high speed Adhoc network support in Windows and disabled the functionality in their driver due to stability issues.

This left us with a decision to make; do we stay with an Adhoc network solution when the rest of the industry isn’t focusing on it or change our solution? The decision to change was actually quite easy to make however the implementation was more difficult. Significant time and money has gone into changing the way the IUM connects to the Host PC.

Today, the IUM Drive is an WiFi Access Point providing upto 300Mbps connection which is quite amazing given it’s size. The Host PC connects to the IUM like it would any other access point and the files are shared over this dedicated WiFi connection.

However, this also left us with a problem. How does the user of the Host PC stay connected to the internet if their WiFi connection is communicating only to the IUM? They could use the Ethernet port of the Host PC to provide a wired solution for Internet Access however that doesn’t meet our requirements of no additional hardware and providing a portable solution.

So, back into R&D we went. We tried many different solutions however the best solution which gave the user the most control was a development we call Dual-WiFi.

Dual-WiFi enables the IUM to communicate to two wireless networks simultaneously without dropping a connection. The Host PC connects to the IUM and the IUM can connect to your Wireless Internet Access Point.

This means that while you are using the IUM, internet access is maintained on the Host PC as all traffic is routed to the IUM and then to your Internet Access Point. Dual-WiFi can be enabled or disabled based on your need.

So, in the process of developing the world’s first Infinite USB Memory Drive, we actually created a second world’s first, the world’s first consumer electronic device to include Dual-WiFi technology.

If you haven’t seen the YouTube Video about Dual-WiFi you can check it out below:

David McKern
Chief Marketing Officer

Share and Enjoy:

Raj Patro

The concept is good, but the pricing it not. With the high capacity USB drivies available at $25 for 16 GB, IUM does not offer the value for money. To make it really a killer product you need to bring down the price substantially to somewhere close to $25. You might not break-even in the first product or in the first year of going commercial, but you would acquire a loyal customer base to try out your upcoming new products.
Justin Tuttle

All this work to come up with dual wifi? The only reason it was necessary is because for (who-knows-why) you guys circumvented/ignored the standard infrastructure wireless setup that is present in the vast majority of the homes/offices of your customer base. And with that, you neglected probably half of said customer base, the half that actually want to pair this device with a computer or server that doesn’t HAVE WiFi (the ones that actually house all the ‘terabytes of INFINITE storage’ you guys keep touting about in your marketing).
So in your ‘infinite’ wisdom of not running this device through a standard infrastructure access point to connect to the paired computer (in order to provide a “perfect solution for us to achieve our goal for a portable solution with no additional hardware required”) …You failed, BADLY. You managed to shun much of your (rather niche) product customer base, and lost sales…at least one or more that I know of (mine) and anybody I could’ve turned on to this product.
In order to use this product on a computer without WiFi, I would have to add a WiFi adapter and a few bridges and such to get the ad-hoc connection across the house, but if you allowed it communicate via standard infrastructure available to almost, if not all of, your potential customers (without therefore needing your oh-so-awesome “world’s first dual-wifi technology”) You would have a happy new customer able to use the product “with no additional hardware required.” Oh, the irony. You guys call it “a perfect solution for us to achieve our goal”? Was your goal to lose customers by not implementing a relatively simple (and to be honest, assumed) function? If so, you are 100% correct, it was a perfect solution.
Acidoverflow

When can I buy this great tool in Germany? It’s what actually fits my needs to get my TV play my movies without using xbox.

Greetz

Arne
http://www.infinitec.com Infinitec

Hi Arnie. You can buy the IUM online through our e-shop and we will deliver it to you via FedEx to Germany.

Infinitec Customer Support.
Ian Attenburrow

I have to agree with Mr Justin Tuttle (commented below), Everyone connects to an infrastucture already, if you guys just simple made your device connect and obtain an IP address then it has access to files shares on the whole local infrastructure. If you guys wanna pull this one back from dark depths then may I suggest you go backwards on the drawing board and make this a LAN device available in both hard wired RJ45 and Wifi connections !

Peace out !
Ian Attenburrow

I guess that Infinitec has little to say on the matter……
Guest

Heh-heh. Or, I guess…Chirp-Chirp (crickets)….
http://thepeoplescube.com Ventur0us Iumvseyefinews

As soon as this is available from Amazon I’ll buy a few…..

waiting .. hopefully expectant!!

mmm pwoer

P.S. why not esatap (USB + Esata = one port)
http://thepeoplescube.com Ventur0us Iumvseyefinews

now how to one up boxee box? or play nicely

and intergrate in newest round of LCD HD TVs that inflict connected.yahoo apps on users

astraweb app for yahoo widget tv would be another nice “infinite” innovation
http://thepeoplescube.com Ventur0us Iumvseyefinews

usb to micro adapter for portable audio recorders (of music or lectures) ??

first one to GSM modem or verizon 3g/4g equivalent wins the portable ultimate storage contest

plase infinite yourself out to Amazon S3 cloud, or rackspace cloud

add SSL VPN to the mix for my music/video collection anywhere…

dumping into it with IUM
pulling from it with PMP and IUM

win

@dev commenting email real DEA
http://thepeoplescube.com Ventur0us Iumvseyefinews

However, this also left us with a problem. How does the user of the Host PC stay connected to the internet if their WiFi connection is communicating only to the IUM?

—–

a new flavor of bonding

…

or multiple clients etc

–

one is a lonely number… prone to disconnections and shouting

.. or beating a metaphor for drive NCQ into something shiny
Wayne

I would have to agree, use the existing networks!
In fact, maybe go one stage further – stick a web config screen in there (accessed over the USB side or WiFi side) where by you can config it to connect to existing shares on your network. That way NO software is needed to run on your PC – you config it remotely and away you go!
(Ok the init set up will need to be over USB to get it to connect to your wifi – but thats an ‘app’ rather than server)

And whilst I’m here – have the ability to get it to link to and ‘mount’ a CD ISO – then when you plug it in, the device/ computer etc thinks you have just plugged in a USB CD player with a disk in the drive!
Giancarlo

My 2TB hard drive is connected to the WiFi router via usb. The router creates all kinds of shares. Why should i stick this HDD into the laptop before using ium? At work, medium to large bussiness company, we have a lot of NAS servers, amd WiFi Access Point. Should i plug the NAS into my laptop? If i could do IUM devices, i could make them scan for shares automatically, all kind of shares, or i could set them via software where to look and how to login (faster). I am waiting for you to finish the job, then i will buy. Not now, for sure.
Oswin

+1 Add normal infrastructure support. So I can use my already in place 802.1N WiFi network.

Sep201005

David

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