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Devicescape Cuts the Ties That Bind Future devices will connect directly to variety of services, company says


By Edward J. Correia
June 1, 2006 — 
A device in every hand and a service for every device. That variation of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 campaign slogan might be fitting for Devicescape Software, which in May unveiled its vision of a landscape filled with wireless devices connecting effortlessly to a variety of services free from the tethers of PC synchronization.

The company, founded in 2001 as Instant802 Networks, took a step toward that vision on May 1 when it released Easy Access, a solution it claims can initiate instantaneous, ad hoc WiFi networks between devices at the touch of a button.

The software builds on Devicescape’s Secure Wireless Client and Wireless Infrastructure Platform, products it markets mainly to OEMs building wireless client devices, routers and access points.

But according to Glenn Flinchbaugh, vice president of marketing and products, Easy Access also has numerous applications in the enterprise. “One of the challenges for enterprise developers is use of certificate-based authentication protocols. [While] it’s not a big deal to provision those into a laptop, which typically connect with a wire first, provisioning them to a handheld device is difficult,” he said, because many such devices have no means to connect physically while they roam. “Easy Access could enable the delivery of a certificate wirelessly for setting up a device on somebody’s network.”

Flinchbaugh said the software is an implementation of Simple Config, a specification being developed by the WiFi Alliance, a multivendor consortium founded in 1999 to promote high-speed wireless networking. Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Phillips, TI and Sony are among its approximately 250 members.

“In the past, it has been hard for people to set up and use WiFi networking devices,” Flinchbaugh said. “[WiFi] won’t be successful if it’s not brain-dead simple to get on the network and get access to a service.” Microsoft will reportedly support the protocol in Vista as Windows Connect Now 2.0.

Beyond the obvious consumer applications, Flinchbaugh said the benefits of ubiquitous, high-speed connectivity can be realized by enterprise developers building applications for package delivery tracking, insurance claim handling and photojournalist reporting.

To help grease the wheels of adoption, Devicescape has contributed its Advanced Datapath Driver—a high-performance native 802.11 media access control driver that it developed for Linux—for adoption into the Linux 2.6 kernel.

“Developers have had to port WiFi drivers from Windows, and that’s been a hindrance,” Flinchbaugh said.


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