Linksys is the next company to take on the mesh wifi concept as it announces Velop at CES 2017-- a multi-router system promising to envelope (thus the name) the house with wireless bandwidth.

The Velop system uses a tri-band 802.11ac MU-MIMO mesh network, with one band dedicated to communication between routers to prevent some of the bottlenecks two-band systems suffer from. The routers also include two ethernet ports in case customers prefer cable connectivity. The mesh system is self-healing, and can handle up to 5 Velop units to ensure wifi coverage in even the largest of houses.

Inside the routers is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU, 4GB flash storage and 512MB DDR3 RAM, together with wifi and Bluetooth radios. Interestingly support for Amazon Alexa is also included for users wanting to take advantage of voice-based control.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) gives the final stamp of approval to Bluetooth 5 as the latest version of the wireless networking standard-- one with longer range, faster speed and larger broadcast message capability.

Specifically, Bluetooth 5 promises up to x4 the range, x2 the speed and x8 the broadcast message capability compared to the previous version. As a result it should be able to power whole home and building coverage, enable more responsive, high-performance device and allow for more context relevant solutions. Also included are updates helping reduce potential interference with other wireless technologies, allowing it to coexist with other networking standards within the Internet of Things (IoT).

LuxLive 2016 sees the world's first test of li-fi, the lighting-based networking system developed by Scotland-based pureLiFi, in a live setting-- one featuring the streaming of a video to a tablet.

The li-fi system was connected to the tablet via USB. When Harald stood directly under the Power over Ethernet (PoE) adapted stage lights, a network was quickly detected, although the signal soon started to fade as he moved further from the lights. This means the technology, at least so far, still has a short range. In fact, each li-fi lighting fixture has a range of sixty degrees and 7-8 square metres, and as such multiple enabled luminaires need to be used to widen available coverage.

"Wireless communication is lacking frequency," pureLiFi's Dr. Harald Burchardt tells LuxReview. Li-fi technology has the ability to widen the capacity of our wireless communication options."

According to ABI Research, 2017 will mark another milestone in Bluetooth technology through the release of Bluetooth 5 specification, further pushing wireless networking technology as the leading connectivity solution for the IoT.

The analyst forecasts 2021 Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready device shipments reaching 5 billion units, the result of technical enhancements opening new opportunities, use cases and device types. Outside of mobile space, key IoT market growth areas include smart home and smart lighting, beacons and wearables, among others.

“While smartphones and audio accessories remain Bluetooth’s largest markets, the technology is becoming more attractive to low-power IoT applications,” ABI says. “Though Bluetooth still faces strong competition from the other standards, mesh networking will enable new opportunities for the technology in the smart home, building automation, and emerging IoT markets in which robustness, low latency, scalability, minimal power consumption and strong security are all additional critical requirements.”