Chinese computer networking product manufacturer TP-Link Technologies Co. Ltd. has showcased a rather unique-looking router at the 2016 CES held in Las Vegas, Nevada, known as the Talon AD7200. It is the first WiGig router in the world and will be available on nearby electronics stores after the CES. Although there is no word on its price tag, it is expected to cost around US$250.
TP-Link's Talon AD7200 is not just a WiGig router. It also supports the usual Wi-Fi protocols from 2.4 gigahertz to 5.0 gigahertz. The idea of the router is all about proximity. If a connection user is near the router, it will use WiGig. If not, it will fall back to the usual slower links. The router has capabilities of up to 4600 megabits per second on 60 gigahertz, 17300 megabits per second on 5.0 gigahertz and 800 megabits per second on 2.4 gigahertz connectivity.
As one would expect from a high-end router, it has an array of techy features as well. It has eight antennas that are fold flat for some beam-forming multiple user multiple input and multiple output wireless communication action. Otherwise known as the MU-MIMO, this means that multiple users can be on the same room on the same router and still get a fast and decent connection. It also has two universal serial bus 3.0 ports, four gigabit Ethernet ports on the back and the fancy but usual management software.
The press release from TP-Link states that the Talon router uses two Qualcomm Atheros solutions. Qualcomm Inc. appears to be the first company to market a product with an 802.11ad amendment due to its acquisition by a fabless semiconductor company in 2014 that is known for developing 60-gigahertz wireless chipsets called Wilocity. Wilocity is a company based in California founded by ex-Intel engineers who worked for the Centrino project originally in 2007 and was one of the first companies to have a working demo of a WiGig setup at the 2012 CES.
The WiGig ecosystem is fairly small at the present time. At the moment, the Lenovo X1 laptop has WiGig, along with a docking station. Acer's TravelMate P648 also has WiGig support that it unveiled at the 2016 CES that is also based on the 802.11ad amendment of the Qualcomm Atheros. It is expected for the years to come for televisions with docking stations to have WiGig capabilities.
