Microsoft Is Working On Virtual WiFi

October 21st, 2006 Davis Posted in Technology, Microsoft |

Back in my P2P days, I remember how frustrating it would be to try and download music on a 56K connection and surf the net at the same time. At the time, I remember wishing I could artificially boost my bandwidth for when I needed more or that I could somehow allocate only a certain percentage of my bandwidth when I wanted to surf the net. I’m not sure if any of the P2P companies every figured out a way to do this because it’s probably been at least 5 years since I’ve wanted to risk an internet STD for a free music file, but Microsoft is working on a project in their research labs that sounds like it can do just that.

It’s called Virtual WiFi and it takes a single wireless access card and tricks it into thinking it’s more then just one card. The card could then connect to multiple access points simultaneously. While Microsoft is trying to use the technology to help troubleshoot dead wifi issues and to expand capabilities of a network, I’m more excited by the potential consumer applications that this sort of technology could create.

The product is still very much in a research phase and I’m not ready to be the one to check out something that seems a little too technical even for my tastes, but for those of you interested you can not only download the program, but also get a copy of the source code to geek out with.