back to article Broadcom bullish in 802.11ac and in-car Ethernet

Broadcom has been outlining its plans for the next year, including a big push into the 802.11ac wireless arena and a new venture for in-car Ethernet. The company has decided to push the forthcoming 8012.11ac Wi-Fi standard in its consumer electronics hardware lines, touting a near doubling of the range of 802.11n systems, more …

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  1. Denarius

    Oh great, another security focus area

    and sucking data out of the engine management system for use against you, installing loggers, malware and nannyware just gets easier.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did I miss something?

    "New Twisted-Pair Ethernet"? Isn't regular Ethernet twisted pair? Two twisted pairs, providing differential signals for Tx and Rx (or two pairs of pairs for Gigabit)?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, you did, as did I on first read.

      Regular, now-a-days, is indeed twisted pair, or rather, two pairs, one pair TX and one pair RX, and four for gigabit (with each doing some TX and RX both). The trick is in the cabling, which is now cheaper and smaller. I'd already seen thin/flat cable that vaguely looks like "silver satin"* that nonetheless is spec compliant up to gigabit, and I'm not up-to-date enough to know whether this guy is just catching up now or whether there's something truly new going on.

      Then again the article talks about "RS242" which AFAIK doesn't exist (RS232 and RS422 do).

      Personally I don't think ethernet is such a great idea for things that are essentially serial, point-to-point in nature. Trying to transfer several megabytes over 9600baud is no fun, of course, but instead I'd take some of those coding advances and fashion a much faster "dumb serial" out of that rather than build an office lan in my car. Yes I know it's already being used in industry and such, and there are good arguments for it, as well as bad ones that're often overlooked. Ethernet is a bit like a ground cover weed that way.

      * AKA flat phone cable, which is *not* twisted; you need those twists and that was a regular source of "oh but why doesn't it work any more?" after upgrades from 10BaseT to 100BaseT as the former can stand a lot more abuse.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    And as if there weren't enough distractions right now for drivers...

    ...now they can have Internet access in their cars? God help us all!

    Most punters haven't a clue as how to drive a car when behind the wheel right now...this should REALLY increase the highway death numbers in short order.

    Think I'll consider taking shorter routes to & fro from now on!

  4. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
    Angel

    With all this money BMW are spending on this high-tech kit, you'd have thought that they could afford to take indicators off the "Optional Kit List" and include them as standard on their cars.

  5. jungle_jim

    I love gadgets and tech, but leave my car driving to me.

    anything that makes a decision for me is wank, and people just tend to use it as an excuse when things go tits up as they invariably do.

    and i dont mean i want to go back to carbs.

    i mean when i boot a pedal i want it to have that effect, i dont want a computer asking "does the driver want to be flooring it?"

  6. annodomini2
    Black Helicopters

    Interesting movie plots and assasination attempts

    Take control of the car via wifi and drive it off a cliff.

    Crap i've beeenen dirscoverdd.........saaaa ...........beeeeeeep!

  7. Voland's right hand Silver badge
    Devil

    So far BMW, Hyundai, and Land Rover, along with NXP and Freescale,

    In other words - all the ones who do not like CanBus. Rather unsurprisingly VW group which has embraced it is not there :)

  8. PeterM42
    IT Angle

    Brings a whole new meaning.....

    ...... to the technical concept of "collision detect"!!!!!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_sense_multiple_access_with_collision_detection

  9. Adam Comben
    FAIL

    RE: I love gadgets and tech, but leave my car driving to me.

    At which point did the article say the car is going to take control over any aspect of your driving experience? It clearly states the idea is to replace existing cables with this new type. Nothing was mentioned about it steering your car for you...

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