12 ms·

Cross-Platform P2P Wi-Fi: How the EU Killed AWDL

223 points by stusmall 2y ago

mschuster91 2y ago
The interesting question is authentication/authorization - at the moment, macOS greatly simplifies this as long as both devices belong to the same Apple ID. On the opposite side, Samsung does the same. How will that work out?
- api 2y ago
  Vanilla P2P Wifi is amazing for the possibilities it unlocks, but unfortunately most developers can't do security to save their lives. There will be a lot of insecure apps.
- bigfish24 2y ago
  For something like AirDrop this will need to be sorted out, but already work occurred to reverse engineer this: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop Would be cool if an open standard on auth forms on top of this.
  - fire_lake 2y ago
    For this to succeed I think we need a C implementation that can be used by many languages and runtimes.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Not in C, please, since this is something that by definition will handle at least some unauthenticated low-level protocol traffic.
      - apitman 2y ago
        I'm impressed you managed to not use the R-word
    - ryao 2y ago
      The AWDL part is in C: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl
  - lxgr 2y ago
    How would an open implementation be compatible with this, given that Apple's implementation is based on an Apple-operated PKI? Note that this is only a conversation about sender identification, which allows sending to a "non-world-visible" receiving device and confirmation-less sending to devices with the same iCloud account on them. Anonymous sending isn't cryptographically gated by Apple, to my knowledge.
    - ryao 2y ago
      Their documentation suggests that is only needed by contacts only mode and they wrote some code to get the needed certificates from macOS: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/airdrop-keychain-extractor https://github.com/seemoo-lab/airdrop-keychain-extractor
      - lxgr 2y ago
        That still requires you to have (access to) a Mac and an iCloud account. It might be possible to reimplement the required Apple API, but as demonstrated by the iMessage/Beeper saga, they usually shut such things down pretty quickly.
- lxgr 2y ago
  That's certainly a nice feature, but in comparison to the elephant in the room, i.e. wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment, it's completely insignificant.
  - tsujamin 2y ago
    > wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform. Maybe I'm an edge case, but probably 90% of my Airdrop usage is between my own devices, so the platform taking care of the authentication story is of more utility than cross-platform transfers. If someone isn't on iOS I'll just send them the file on Signal since, if the source is my phone in the first place, it's probably not a huge transfer anyway.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform. Yeah, via their server, which means it's slow even if you have wifi, requires valuable data credit if not, or it requires the installation of a companion app on the other device and putting the other device in the same network.
      - MaKey 2y ago
        The biggest point for me is privacy. I don't want to upload private data to some server just to send it to another device that's next to mine.
        apitman 2y ago
        Most quality apps should be e2ee right?
        2y ago
gyudin 2y ago
[flagged]
simfoo 2y ago
WiFi Aware looks interesting but there seems to be very little information out there beyond Android related docs and associated links. It seems to be hidden away behind the doors of WiFi alliance. Can anyone familiar with the topic chime in what it would take to utilize WiFi Aware in let's say a Raspberry Pi (maybe using a different wireless chip connected via usb)? Maybe even to connect to Android smartphones
tambre 2y ago
I recently wanted to do point-to-point Wi-Fi for transferring some data but apparently support for the ad-hoc IBSS mode wasn't available on my MT7925. Wi-Fi Aware is completely new to me and didn't come up while searching on the topic at all. I can't find anything about using it on Linux now either. Anybody have any references on its support? There's a single kernel commit referencing Wi-Fi Aware from 2023 [0]. iw supposedly supports a few commands pertaining to it [1]. [0] https://web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?h=v6.14&id=9b89495e479c5fedbf3f2eca4f1c4e9dd481265e [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53594406/implementing-a-wifi-aware-application-outside-android
- Avamander 2y ago
  Any WiFi operation besides STA is in general a crapshoot, especially if the card is not meant for use in an AP. WiFi hardware vendors can't be bothered to provide fully usable stacks for anything else (if even that). For example Intel's broken Location Aware Regulatory completely breaks any use-cases where your device is not the STA (on anything besides 2.4GHz). Most cards also have no DFS support, meaning you'll be left with a microscopic usable segment. Then there's also the problem with incorrect regulatory information. All of which in the end makes reliable high-speed point-to-point operation very annoying to achieve. Even if it'd be totally legal. Leaving you with a terribly slow link.
- myself248 2y ago
  Adhoc was the coolest thing, I still miss it. One day in 2002-ish, I was showing a friend some photos on my laptop and noticed a crowd had gathered over my shoulder, and there simply wasn't enough room for everyone to get a good view. "Fire up adhoc, set it to this ssid, vnc to this address" Two minutes later, my photos are on five screens around the coffee shop and everyone can see. Adhoc just worked, and that's more than I can say for a great many things before or since.
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - 2y ago
joshstrange 2y ago
So it's lightning all over again? Lightning was better than micro-usb, then USB-C came out and was even better and people get pissy at Apple for creating something better than the standard (and donating some of that back to the standard). I know this will not be popular here but I really do not like the EU's most recent round of "no, you have to open up this feature".
- meibo 2y ago
  ...what use is "donating" back to the standard if you don't adopt the standard, practically preventing its adoption through your position in the market?
  - jeffhuys 2y ago
    It wasn't really prevented, though, right? Apple was late to the game, yes, but that by definition means that its adoption was already well on its way; most of my non-Apple acquaintances were mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)...
    - lxgr 2y ago
      > mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)... It really isn't that irrelevant in a world in which being able to charge a phone can mean the difference between being able to get on a flight/train etc. or missing it. Apple switching to USB-C has doubled (or more, based on the country) the odds of finding somebody with a compatible cable and power bank in a pinch.
      - jeffhuys 2y ago
        Right, I get the usefulness. Absolutely. But would you just randomly mock a person for not having a USB-C connection? They just saw my phone, I didn't even ask for a charger. Besides, I always carry a collection of cables, even for those who mock me.
    - dspillett 2y ago
yapyap 2y ago
Sounds like they’d keep it as yet another Apple exclusive instead of y’know, introducing a new industry thing
- renecito 2y ago
  Good bye free market. If a "new industry thing" is far superior and what customers want, why other vendors don't do it? Now, if government sees a benefit in driving and sharing technology I'd be happy the government would actively participate in R&D.
  - tremon 2y ago
    What do you mean? The government does actively participate in R&D, in the form of research grants, development subsidies and tax benefits.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      >The government does actively participate in R&D, in the form of research grants, development subsidies and tax benefits. They do, it's only bad when China does it.
  - subscribed 2y ago
    They could develop ALSO their protocol and offer both. I don't recognise Apple as the proponent of the new open standards. They didn't offer lightning to everyone, hell, even to make the lightning cable I'd have to pay a heavy licensing fee. Apple is not open and proponent of the common standards, hence they must be forced to adapt open standards in the name of interoperability. Personally I'd prefer lightning port on my phone instead of this stupid and fragile USB-c, bit since Apple wasn't interested in opening their standard.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    > If a "new industry thing" is far superior and what customers want, why other vendors don't do it? The other vendors do it. The problem is that we then end up with a dozen of solutions that do the same thing, but are incompatible with each other.
dmitrygr 2y ago
I do love bureaucrats who could not tell Wifi from InfraRed deciding what comms standards are to be used.
- lillecarl 2y ago
  Indeed, it's a lot better when the EU bureaucrats in collaboration with industry experts decide what comms standards should be used instead of profit maximizing megacorporations!
- lxgr 2y ago
  For what it's worth, the bureaucrats did just fine with USB-C and Lightning.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Competent government workers are able to rely on experts to deal with various issues. There's lots of regulation around tech, environment, animals, health, building requirements, etc. that we can't realistically expect everyone to have a deep understanding of.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  I don't care how dumb the bureaucrats are so long as the end result is that when my parents ask me to "AirDrop" them a file or picture, the conversation doesn't end with... - I texted it to you, but it looks like crap, because MMS is crap - I tried to email it to you but it's over 2 megs and I have to walk downstairs, get it off my phone and onto a Real Computer™, then scale it down - I emailed you a Google Drive link, wait what do you mean you don't know how to sign into that? Yeah just use that app... oh wait no that's a different Google Account from the one you have your Gmail on - No, I'm not using Messenger, I don't like getting my data zucked by Facebook - Hey, there's this very easy way you can send files, you just need to install this app - what do you mean you forgot your Apple ID password for the third time this week? - Let me run downstairs and get my special USB-C flash drive - oh god damn it you still have the phones with Lightning ports on them - Let me run downstairs and grab my iPad, chuck the image over to it using Dropbox, then AirDrop you AirDrop just works, not because it's Apple, but because having a direct P2P transfer utility built into every phone and laptop cuts out all sorts of setup and permissioning issues. Apple just decided their protocol was going to be the only one they'd support, and that everyone else who bought the wrong phone should pound sand.
jokoon 2y ago
Interesting! Basically the EU is now able to force american companies to do things that the US regulator will not do, probably because Apple can manage to lobby US congress but not the EU parliament. That probably means that US companies can probably help "counter" Apple on certain things as long as the EU sees that it benefits the consumer. I don't know if Trump somehow caused this situation.
- anilakar 2y ago
  EU has been regulating tech companies at least since the MicroUSB charger mandate. This has nothing to do with Trump, but once he hears about it he'll make sure everyone else knows too.
- bux93 2y ago
  Standards are essential for a common market and competition and drivers for prosperity. This is nothing new. Your Iphone probably also says "RoHS", which marks compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. Mostly manufacturers try to comply with both EU and US standards at the same time. Typically the EU environmental and safety standards are a bit stricter. For example, in medicine, you first get FDA approval and then EMA approval, not just because it's a bigger market, but also because it's easier.
- stefan_ 2y ago
  You know in a parallel world this headline is just "EU mandates Apple-designed P2P Wi-Fi standard". They did submit it for standardization after all, keeping to their proprietary one was just a transparent segmentation play.
- gpderetta 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
rubatuga 2y ago
This is good news
lawlessone 2y ago
>A quietly published EU interoperability roadmap mandates Apple support Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in iOS 19 and v5.0,1 thereafter, essentially forcing AWDL into retirement. Whats stopping Apple from doing both?
- bigfish24 2y ago
  I think the EU mandate forces them to do both, so that devices with AWDL are not advantaged over non-Apple devices with Wi-Fi Aware, so my read is that mandate will mean Apple devices will do both modes until they can transition AWDL off entirely.
- 0x457 2y ago
  Nothing, but since Apple is the only user of AWDL and WiFi Aware makes it redundant, why support both (in long term)?
  - pmontra 2y ago
    Because they could want to offer WiFi Aware in the EU and AWDL anywhere else, even in the long term. And switch back to AWDL everywhere if the EU stops mandating interoperability some day in the future.
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    I’ll bet $100 that AWDL is better designed and will work better. It isn’t like Google didn’t have all the time and chances to do this right. Android beam worked 50% of the time. IIRC half of the failures were BT and half were WiFi. Airdrop is much more reliable than 50%
    - 0x457 2y ago
      I think it's an android problem and not WiFi Aware problem
- dathinab 2y ago
  nothing excepts it doesn't make sense for them basically the mandate requires them to not hamper WI-FI Aware in anyway which pushes developers into using AWDL instead, i.e. they require it to be as good +- some technical differences in features not so relevant for 3rd party use cases and if you provide something which works as good why should they keep AWDL around, it's just double the dev cost and AWDL is getting older and Wi-Fi Aware is getting nice WiFi7 improvements soon so as long as they don't have some use case outside of what Wi-Fi Aware is supposed to do which happens to work with AWDL they keeping both around long term is not a very good decision economically
formerly_proven 2y ago
I dunno what the site is doing (mining crypto?), but it takes two cores to fullest throttle for me.
- ecshafer 2y ago
  I think it might be the css animation that moves the dots on the background.
  - Timon3 2y ago
    It's not a CSS animation, it's canvas with p5. It probably renders every frame, even though the rendered result doesn't change if there hasn't been a click.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I really wish there were some write-ups for doing wifi-p2p aka wifi-aware (the wifi alliance's proprietary branding for it) on Linux! Incredibly sad that it's just so so so undocumented; such a neat sounding suite of capabilities. Haven't looked in 2-3 years, but found so little ehm last I looked. Very dismaying. So many folks doing "p2p" file sharing apps, but generally they assume you have setup networking already. We really need to own the means of connectivity. Especially now!
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Unfortunately I believe it requires your WiFi firmware have the ability to switch channels with microsecond timing precision. That means you couldn't do it with off the shelf WiFi hardware. You might be able to do it whilst dropping existing WiFi connections during the transfer.
  - snops 2y ago
    The article links to a Linux implementation that does it with off the shelf WiFi hardware. You do need specific features in the hardware/firmware, but there are consumer devices that have that e.g. Atheros AR9280. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl It currently drops connections to an AP, but the authors of the implementation seem to believe this could be fixed: > OWL does not allow a concurrent connection to an AP. This means, that when started, the Wi-Fi interface exclusively uses AWDL. To work around this, OWL could create a new monitor interface (instead of making the Wi-Fi interface one) and adjust its channel sequence to include the channel of the AP network.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    I'm fine having a second wifi card for wifi-p2p on Linux. Ideally the situation gets better over time, as wifi-p2p becomes a better used better travelled system. Ideally the second wifi adapter could be USB based! For years usb cards were very second tier; I haven't tried again lately but I assume that's still largely the case. Given that there are some pretty affordable (below $70) barebones thunderbolt docks for GPUs, it'd be neat to see some thunderbolt docks designed for one or multiple wifi cards (or other m.2).
Calwestjobs 2y ago
" It took the concepts Apple pioneered (timeslot synchronization... " Pioneered does not mean inventing, never seen before concept. Pioneered means in this context - taking concepts already used in other radio networks and using them in their "wifi stack". Concepts used for decades before Apple even had iphone. I am not sure what / why is there difference between speeds of AWDL vs NAN in that table, my understanding was it can transfer at same speeds. Speed being limited by upload capability of "wifi chip".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
apitman 2y ago
If you've never heard of Ditto before, they're one of the leaders in cross platform small-scale mesh networking. If they're excited about this, I'm excited about this.
apitman 2y ago
I frequently play Age of Empires 2 with my wife and her brother. Remarkably, this game still supports LAN play in 2025, even though the netcode has been completely overhauled since 1999. However, we decided to try it on a recent flight, and it turns out it still requires an internet connection, both to satisfy Steam, and to connect to some sort of LAN coordination server. I ended up paying $20 for in-flight wifi. We've lost a lot in the last 30 years, but tech like wifi aware might help bring back local-first networking. I choose to believe that if solid APIs exist, developers will use them.
- dathinab 2y ago
  > and to connect to some sort of LAN this is actually kind of a hard UI/UX problem for game developers many p2p+local auto recovery protocols are very bothersome, partially due to some of the protocols being bad or incomplete and a lot due to all kind of hardware & OSs partially or fully crippling them so game devs often have to fall back to a coordinator server to provide reliable and easy to use functionality for most which also happens to often be the easiest thing to implement and maintain, and then in addition they could also implement work-arounds for the no-internet case but that is additional cost for a overall niche use case (local co-op without internet), so it ends up in the backlog with low priority at best or gets outright killed. To make that worse steam provides tools to make it much easier to implement co-op (focused on non local co-op), and the easiest way to use them is in a way which always requires internet even for local co-op so as long as steam doesn't put in a lot of work to make no-internet local co-op close to free to implement for most games it will never happen for most games
  - fulafel 2y ago
    What's the problem with just sending some UDP beacons to the local network broadcast address? (or multicast all-hosts address)
    - dathinab 2y ago
      - middleware in the networks not forwarding broadcast messages - depending on device and application type you not even being able to send broadcast/the OS silently dropping them - firewall blocking incoming TCP/UDP without hole punching - p2p in games having security implications (unsafe network stacks, game engine etc. allowing RCEs and similar) so you want to make sure only "more trusted" communication can happen, so TLS is needed, but without actually fully secure p2p TLS is not easy, mainly there are issues with establishing trust (you either have to involve some side channel (i.e. a pin, QR code or similar) or pre-established trust. The biggest thing is still that as a steam game you have a reliably, proven, easy to use "solution" as part of your normal steam integration which you anyway want to use to be able to use the friend invite system which has the drawback of needing internet for local coop which is niche use-case likely not selling any games. Why would a company implement an additional solution and handle all the UX issues of switching between them?
Eduard 2y ago
> Wi-Fi Ad-hoc. It never gained widespread use. I don't think this is true. In the early 2000s, in Germany, the alternative, now vastly used "infrastructure mode" was rare because Wi-Fi basestations were rare and expensive, e.g. DSL modems didn't have built-in Wi-Fi. So the only way of wirelessly sharing internet at home / files with friends at university (which also didn't have Wi-Fi yet) was with ad-hoc mode.
dwaite 2y ago
My understanding is that Apple already does have Wi-Fi Aware support (as it is required for interoperable implementations of things like ISO 18013-5). Is this about mandating a version upgrade, or about adding some developer API surface for it?
sroussey 2y ago
So Apple has to drop UWB until the spec catches up?
teleforce 2y ago
There is a new alternative p2p mesh wireless in town, and suprisingly it was introduced by IEEE Wi-Fi Alliance rival 3GPP. It's the very first non-cellular standard for 5G namely DECT NR+ [1]. Since it's backward compatible with DECT it will be very supportive of real-time traffic for voice. [1] What is DECT-2020 New Radio (NR), and how big a deal is it? (2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849335

223 points by stusmall 2y ago

The interesting question is authentication/authorization - at the moment, macOS greatly simplifies this as long as both devices belong to the same Apple ID. On the opposite side, Samsung does the same. How will that work out?

api 2y ago
Vanilla P2P Wifi is amazing for the possibilities it unlocks, but unfortunately most developers can't do security to save their lives. There will be a lot of insecure apps.
bigfish24 2y ago
For something like AirDrop this will need to be sorted out, but already work occurred to reverse engineer this: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop Would be cool if an open standard on auth forms on top of this.
- fire_lake 2y ago
  For this to succeed I think we need a C implementation that can be used by many languages and runtimes.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Not in C, please, since this is something that by definition will handle at least some unauthenticated low-level protocol traffic.
    - apitman 2y ago
      I'm impressed you managed to not use the R-word
  - ryao 2y ago
    The AWDL part is in C: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl
- lxgr 2y ago
  How would an open implementation be compatible with this, given that Apple's implementation is based on an Apple-operated PKI? Note that this is only a conversation about sender identification, which allows sending to a "non-world-visible" receiving device and confirmation-less sending to devices with the same iCloud account on them. Anonymous sending isn't cryptographically gated by Apple, to my knowledge.
  - ryao 2y ago
    Their documentation suggests that is only needed by contacts only mode and they wrote some code to get the needed certificates from macOS: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/airdrop-keychain-extractor https://github.com/seemoo-lab/airdrop-keychain-extractor
    - lxgr 2y ago
      That still requires you to have (access to) a Mac and an iCloud account. It might be possible to reimplement the required Apple API, but as demonstrated by the iMessage/Beeper saga, they usually shut such things down pretty quickly.
lxgr 2y ago
That's certainly a nice feature, but in comparison to the elephant in the room, i.e. wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment, it's completely insignificant.
- tsujamin 2y ago
  > wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform. Maybe I'm an edge case, but probably 90% of my Airdrop usage is between my own devices, so the platform taking care of the authentication story is of more utility than cross-platform transfers. If someone isn't on iOS I'll just send them the file on Signal since, if the source is my phone in the first place, it's probably not a huge transfer anyway.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform. Yeah, via their server, which means it's slow even if you have wifi, requires valuable data credit if not, or it requires the installation of a companion app on the other device and putting the other device in the same network.
    - MaKey 2y ago
      The biggest point for me is privacy. I don't want to upload private data to some server just to send it to another device that's next to mine.
      - apitman 2y ago
        Most quality apps should be e2ee right?
        2y ago

gyudin 2y ago

[flagged]

simfoo 2y ago

WiFi Aware looks interesting but there seems to be very little information out there beyond Android related docs and associated links. It seems to be hidden away behind the doors of WiFi alliance. Can anyone familiar with the topic chime in what it would take to utilize WiFi Aware in let's say a Raspberry Pi (maybe using a different wireless chip connected via usb)? Maybe even to connect to Android smartphones

tambre 2y ago

I recently wanted to do point-to-point Wi-Fi for transferring some data but apparently support for the ad-hoc IBSS mode wasn't available on my MT7925. Wi-Fi Aware is completely new to me and didn't come up while searching on the topic at all. I can't find anything about using it on Linux now either. Anybody have any references on its support? There's a single kernel commit referencing Wi-Fi Aware from 2023 [0]. iw supposedly supports a few commands pertaining to it [1]. [0] https://web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?h=v6.14&id=9b89495e479c5fedbf3f2eca4f1c4e9dd481265e [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53594406/implementing-a-wifi-aware-application-outside-android

Avamander 2y ago
Any WiFi operation besides STA is in general a crapshoot, especially if the card is not meant for use in an AP. WiFi hardware vendors can't be bothered to provide fully usable stacks for anything else (if even that). For example Intel's broken Location Aware Regulatory completely breaks any use-cases where your device is not the STA (on anything besides 2.4GHz). Most cards also have no DFS support, meaning you'll be left with a microscopic usable segment. Then there's also the problem with incorrect regulatory information. All of which in the end makes reliable high-speed point-to-point operation very annoying to achieve. Even if it'd be totally legal. Leaving you with a terribly slow link.
myself248 2y ago
Adhoc was the coolest thing, I still miss it. One day in 2002-ish, I was showing a friend some photos on my laptop and noticed a crowd had gathered over my shoulder, and there simply wasn't enough room for everyone to get a good view. "Fire up adhoc, set it to this ssid, vnc to this address" Two minutes later, my photos are on five screens around the coffee shop and everyone can see. Adhoc just worked, and that's more than I can say for a great many things before or since.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  [flagged]
- 2y ago

joshstrange 2y ago

So it's lightning all over again? Lightning was better than micro-usb, then USB-C came out and was even better and people get pissy at Apple for creating something better than the standard (and donating some of that back to the standard). I know this will not be popular here but I really do not like the EU's most recent round of "no, you have to open up this feature".

meibo 2y ago
...what use is "donating" back to the standard if you don't adopt the standard, practically preventing its adoption through your position in the market?
- jeffhuys 2y ago
  It wasn't really prevented, though, right? Apple was late to the game, yes, but that by definition means that its adoption was already well on its way; most of my non-Apple acquaintances were mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)...
  - lxgr 2y ago
    > mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)... It really isn't that irrelevant in a world in which being able to charge a phone can mean the difference between being able to get on a flight/train etc. or missing it. Apple switching to USB-C has doubled (or more, based on the country) the odds of finding somebody with a compatible cable and power bank in a pinch.
    - jeffhuys 2y ago
      Right, I get the usefulness. Absolutely. But would you just randomly mock a person for not having a USB-C connection? They just saw my phone, I didn't even ask for a charger. Besides, I always carry a collection of cables, even for those who mock me.
  - dspillett 2y ago

yapyap 2y ago

Sounds like they’d keep it as yet another Apple exclusive instead of y’know, introducing a new industry thing

renecito 2y ago
Good bye free market. If a "new industry thing" is far superior and what customers want, why other vendors don't do it? Now, if government sees a benefit in driving and sharing technology I'd be happy the government would actively participate in R&D.
- tremon 2y ago
  What do you mean? The government does actively participate in R&D, in the form of research grants, development subsidies and tax benefits.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    >The government does actively participate in R&D, in the form of research grants, development subsidies and tax benefits. They do, it's only bad when China does it.
- subscribed 2y ago
  They could develop ALSO their protocol and offer both. I don't recognise Apple as the proponent of the new open standards. They didn't offer lightning to everyone, hell, even to make the lightning cable I'd have to pay a heavy licensing fee. Apple is not open and proponent of the common standards, hence they must be forced to adapt open standards in the name of interoperability. Personally I'd prefer lightning port on my phone instead of this stupid and fragile USB-c, bit since Apple wasn't interested in opening their standard.
- int_19h 2y ago
  > If a "new industry thing" is far superior and what customers want, why other vendors don't do it? The other vendors do it. The problem is that we then end up with a dozen of solutions that do the same thing, but are incompatible with each other.

dmitrygr 2y ago

I do love bureaucrats who could not tell Wifi from InfraRed deciding what comms standards are to be used.

lillecarl 2y ago
Indeed, it's a lot better when the EU bureaucrats in collaboration with industry experts decide what comms standards should be used instead of profit maximizing megacorporations!
lxgr 2y ago
For what it's worth, the bureaucrats did just fine with USB-C and Lightning.
viraptor 2y ago
Competent government workers are able to rely on experts to deal with various issues. There's lots of regulation around tech, environment, animals, health, building requirements, etc. that we can't realistically expect everyone to have a deep understanding of.
kmeisthax 2y ago
I don't care how dumb the bureaucrats are so long as the end result is that when my parents ask me to "AirDrop" them a file or picture, the conversation doesn't end with... - I texted it to you, but it looks like crap, because MMS is crap - I tried to email it to you but it's over 2 megs and I have to walk downstairs, get it off my phone and onto a Real Computer™, then scale it down - I emailed you a Google Drive link, wait what do you mean you don't know how to sign into that? Yeah just use that app... oh wait no that's a different Google Account from the one you have your Gmail on - No, I'm not using Messenger, I don't like getting my data zucked by Facebook - Hey, there's this very easy way you can send files, you just need to install this app - what do you mean you forgot your Apple ID password for the third time this week? - Let me run downstairs and get my special USB-C flash drive - oh god damn it you still have the phones with Lightning ports on them - Let me run downstairs and grab my iPad, chuck the image over to it using Dropbox, then AirDrop you AirDrop just works, not because it's Apple, but because having a direct P2P transfer utility built into every phone and laptop cuts out all sorts of setup and permissioning issues. Apple just decided their protocol was going to be the only one they'd support, and that everyone else who bought the wrong phone should pound sand.

jokoon 2y ago

Interesting! Basically the EU is now able to force american companies to do things that the US regulator will not do, probably because Apple can manage to lobby US congress but not the EU parliament. That probably means that US companies can probably help "counter" Apple on certain things as long as the EU sees that it benefits the consumer. I don't know if Trump somehow caused this situation.

anilakar 2y ago
EU has been regulating tech companies at least since the MicroUSB charger mandate. This has nothing to do with Trump, but once he hears about it he'll make sure everyone else knows too.
bux93 2y ago
Standards are essential for a common market and competition and drivers for prosperity. This is nothing new. Your Iphone probably also says "RoHS", which marks compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. Mostly manufacturers try to comply with both EU and US standards at the same time. Typically the EU environmental and safety standards are a bit stricter. For example, in medicine, you first get FDA approval and then EMA approval, not just because it's a bigger market, but also because it's easier.
stefan_ 2y ago
You know in a parallel world this headline is just "EU mandates Apple-designed P2P Wi-Fi standard". They did submit it for standardization after all, keeping to their proprietary one was just a transparent segmentation play.
gpderetta 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

rubatuga 2y ago

This is good news

lawlessone 2y ago

>A quietly published EU interoperability roadmap mandates Apple support Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in iOS 19 and v5.0,1 thereafter, essentially forcing AWDL into retirement. Whats stopping Apple from doing both?

bigfish24 2y ago
I think the EU mandate forces them to do both, so that devices with AWDL are not advantaged over non-Apple devices with Wi-Fi Aware, so my read is that mandate will mean Apple devices will do both modes until they can transition AWDL off entirely.
0x457 2y ago
Nothing, but since Apple is the only user of AWDL and WiFi Aware makes it redundant, why support both (in long term)?
- pmontra 2y ago
  Because they could want to offer WiFi Aware in the EU and AWDL anywhere else, even in the long term. And switch back to AWDL everywhere if the EU stops mandating interoperability some day in the future.
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  I’ll bet $100 that AWDL is better designed and will work better. It isn’t like Google didn’t have all the time and chances to do this right. Android beam worked 50% of the time. IIRC half of the failures were BT and half were WiFi. Airdrop is much more reliable than 50%
  - 0x457 2y ago
    I think it's an android problem and not WiFi Aware problem
dathinab 2y ago
nothing excepts it doesn't make sense for them basically the mandate requires them to not hamper WI-FI Aware in anyway which pushes developers into using AWDL instead, i.e. they require it to be as good +- some technical differences in features not so relevant for 3rd party use cases and if you provide something which works as good why should they keep AWDL around, it's just double the dev cost and AWDL is getting older and Wi-Fi Aware is getting nice WiFi7 improvements soon so as long as they don't have some use case outside of what Wi-Fi Aware is supposed to do which happens to work with AWDL they keeping both around long term is not a very good decision economically

formerly_proven 2y ago

I dunno what the site is doing (mining crypto?), but it takes two cores to fullest throttle for me.

ecshafer 2y ago
I think it might be the css animation that moves the dots on the background.
- Timon3 2y ago
  It's not a CSS animation, it's canvas with p5. It probably renders every frame, even though the rendered result doesn't change if there hasn't been a click.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

I really wish there were some write-ups for doing wifi-p2p aka wifi-aware (the wifi alliance's proprietary branding for it) on Linux! Incredibly sad that it's just so so so undocumented; such a neat sounding suite of capabilities. Haven't looked in 2-3 years, but found so little ehm last I looked. Very dismaying. So many folks doing "p2p" file sharing apps, but generally they assume you have setup networking already. We really need to own the means of connectivity. Especially now!

londons_explore 2y ago
Unfortunately I believe it requires your WiFi firmware have the ability to switch channels with microsecond timing precision. That means you couldn't do it with off the shelf WiFi hardware. You might be able to do it whilst dropping existing WiFi connections during the transfer.
- snops 2y ago
  The article links to a Linux implementation that does it with off the shelf WiFi hardware. You do need specific features in the hardware/firmware, but there are consumer devices that have that e.g. Atheros AR9280. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl It currently drops connections to an AP, but the authors of the implementation seem to believe this could be fixed: > OWL does not allow a concurrent connection to an AP. This means, that when started, the Wi-Fi interface exclusively uses AWDL. To work around this, OWL could create a new monitor interface (instead of making the Wi-Fi interface one) and adjust its channel sequence to include the channel of the AP network.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I'm fine having a second wifi card for wifi-p2p on Linux. Ideally the situation gets better over time, as wifi-p2p becomes a better used better travelled system. Ideally the second wifi adapter could be USB based! For years usb cards were very second tier; I haven't tried again lately but I assume that's still largely the case. Given that there are some pretty affordable (below $70) barebones thunderbolt docks for GPUs, it'd be neat to see some thunderbolt docks designed for one or multiple wifi cards (or other m.2).

Calwestjobs 2y ago

" It took the concepts Apple pioneered (timeslot synchronization... " Pioneered does not mean inventing, never seen before concept. Pioneered means in this context - taking concepts already used in other radio networks and using them in their "wifi stack". Concepts used for decades before Apple even had iphone. I am not sure what / why is there difference between speeds of AWDL vs NAN in that table, my understanding was it can transfer at same speeds. Speed being limited by upload capability of "wifi chip".

deleted 2y ago
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apitman 2y ago

If you've never heard of Ditto before, they're one of the leaders in cross platform small-scale mesh networking. If they're excited about this, I'm excited about this.

apitman 2y ago

I frequently play Age of Empires 2 with my wife and her brother. Remarkably, this game still supports LAN play in 2025, even though the netcode has been completely overhauled since 1999. However, we decided to try it on a recent flight, and it turns out it still requires an internet connection, both to satisfy Steam, and to connect to some sort of LAN coordination server. I ended up paying $20 for in-flight wifi. We've lost a lot in the last 30 years, but tech like wifi aware might help bring back local-first networking. I choose to believe that if solid APIs exist, developers will use them.

dathinab 2y ago
> and to connect to some sort of LAN this is actually kind of a hard UI/UX problem for game developers many p2p+local auto recovery protocols are very bothersome, partially due to some of the protocols being bad or incomplete and a lot due to all kind of hardware & OSs partially or fully crippling them so game devs often have to fall back to a coordinator server to provide reliable and easy to use functionality for most which also happens to often be the easiest thing to implement and maintain, and then in addition they could also implement work-arounds for the no-internet case but that is additional cost for a overall niche use case (local co-op without internet), so it ends up in the backlog with low priority at best or gets outright killed. To make that worse steam provides tools to make it much easier to implement co-op (focused on non local co-op), and the easiest way to use them is in a way which always requires internet even for local co-op so as long as steam doesn't put in a lot of work to make no-internet local co-op close to free to implement for most games it will never happen for most games
- fulafel 2y ago
  What's the problem with just sending some UDP beacons to the local network broadcast address? (or multicast all-hosts address)
  - dathinab 2y ago
    - middleware in the networks not forwarding broadcast messages - depending on device and application type you not even being able to send broadcast/the OS silently dropping them - firewall blocking incoming TCP/UDP without hole punching - p2p in games having security implications (unsafe network stacks, game engine etc. allowing RCEs and similar) so you want to make sure only "more trusted" communication can happen, so TLS is needed, but without actually fully secure p2p TLS is not easy, mainly there are issues with establishing trust (you either have to involve some side channel (i.e. a pin, QR code or similar) or pre-established trust. The biggest thing is still that as a steam game you have a reliably, proven, easy to use "solution" as part of your normal steam integration which you anyway want to use to be able to use the friend invite system which has the drawback of needing internet for local coop which is niche use-case likely not selling any games. Why would a company implement an additional solution and handle all the UX issues of switching between them?

Eduard 2y ago

> Wi-Fi Ad-hoc. It never gained widespread use. I don't think this is true. In the early 2000s, in Germany, the alternative, now vastly used "infrastructure mode" was rare because Wi-Fi basestations were rare and expensive, e.g. DSL modems didn't have built-in Wi-Fi. So the only way of wirelessly sharing internet at home / files with friends at university (which also didn't have Wi-Fi yet) was with ad-hoc mode.

dwaite 2y ago

My understanding is that Apple already does have Wi-Fi Aware support (as it is required for interoperable implementations of things like ISO 18013-5). Is this about mandating a version upgrade, or about adding some developer API surface for it?

sroussey 2y ago

So Apple has to drop UWB until the spec catches up?

teleforce 2y ago

There is a new alternative p2p mesh wireless in town, and suprisingly it was introduced by IEEE Wi-Fi Alliance rival 3GPP. It's the very first non-cellular standard for 5G namely DECT NR+ [1]. Since it's backward compatible with DECT it will be very supportive of real-time traffic for voice. [1] What is DECT-2020 New Radio (NR), and how big a deal is it? (2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849335