Las Vegas – A new technology that startup
plans to demo here at
International CES will enable consumer electronics products to switch
automatically between Wi-Fi and powerline-carrier (PLC) to maintain streaming-A/V
quality over a home network, the company contends.
The company will stream HD video across a Wi-Fi/PLC network that
uses the Wi-Fi 802.11n and HomePlug AV industry standards.
“The biggest challenge to date
with a Wi-Fi-only or PLC-only implementation is the lack of quality of service
when either transport fails,” business development VP Andy Melder told TWICE.
“This is a major breakthrough in intelligent home networking management.”
The demo, he said, “will show our
fail-over mechanism in action when either transport – HPAV or Wi-Fi – fails. When
either transport fails, the redundancy built into our intelligent switching
agent results in quality of service being maintained. This is critical for
either an operator or over-the-top content delivery service, and it should make
a TV OEM quite happy.”
The company’s technology, called Xtendnet, is designed to continually
monitor the performance of both networks.
Gigle will demonstrate the
technology at Hilton Hotel suite 560 and in the HomePlug Powerline Alliance
Tech Zone in the Convention Center South Hall. The company expects the
technology will turn up first in home routers and gateways, and then be
available as an embedded technology in CE products.
Separately, Gigle will also
demonstrate its 1Gbps Mediaxtreme technology, which sends data and A/V content
over powerlines, a home’s coaxial cables or twisted-pair wiring at actual throughputs
of about 500Mbps. The 1Gbps technology could be used in conjunction with
200Mbps HomePlug AV to deliver data at 1.2Gbps.
Gigle has offices in Redwood City, Calif.; Barcelona, Spain; and Edinburgh,
Scotland.
