For those interested in a little technology M&A news, Atheros, a WiFi chip maker whose products are the brain of many wireless networking devices, today purchased Intellon, a powerline networking chip maker.  The purchase validates powerline networking technology and will allow Atheros to “enable dynamic meshing of wireless and wired bandwidth, providing robust transmission of data, voice and multi-media content on the growing number of networked devices in the home.”  In other words, we can expect to see devices in the near future that provide both wireless and powerline networking strategies to solve common home based networking problems.

I’ve been a big proponent of powerline networking for years.  Given the uncontrollable radiant nature of wireless networking and its inherent security flaws and exploitations, powerline networking is a way for users to transmit data via a medium to which they can physically limit access.  Now, with the HomePlug AV standard boasting maximum throughputs up to 200Mbps (compared to 160Mbps of 802.11n compliant devices), powerline networking is emerging as a viable means of transmitting high bandwidth data streams, such as those associated with high definition video.

But powerline networking’s main advantage over traditional networking methods, despite the superior bandwidth of twisted pair CAT5 cable, continues to be the simplicity of its installation.  Like wireless networking and also key to that technolgy’s past success, powerline networking requires no cables to be run or walls cut apart since it uses the existing wire infrastructure of a building to carry its data.

I’ll follow this closely and report on the first products that benefit from the synergies created by this merger.

[Via:  GigaOM]