More and more new devices, especially Android smartphones, are using the Wi-Fi Direct connection. Wi-Fi Direct allows two devices to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection over Wi-Fi without the need for a wireless router .
In this way, Wi-Fi becomes a method of communication between devices wirelessly, such as Bluetooth.
As a concept, it is similar to the "ad-hoc" Wi-Fi connection, with the difference that Wi-Fi Direct is simpler and can automatically discover nearby devices and connect to them.
Wi-Fi Direct is a relatively new wireless standard that allows you to create a connection between two devices without going through a wireless router .
For example, you can, for example, create a Wi-Fi hotspot, connect your computer or smartphone to the printer or watch streaming videos from the tablet to the TV.
We have already talked about how a router really works, which is the centerpiece of every network of computers and devices, a means of access to connect to the internet.
The router is to be seen as a tree trunk with many branches; the branches cannot really interact with each other except through the trunk, that is the router.
With Wifi-Direct, two devices can talk to each other using a direct connection, without going through the router.
The configuration of Wireless Direct is therefore very simple, based on a button or a unique code, which works a bit like Bluetooth, but more powerful, faster and stable.
For example, if you want to connect your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone to a Wi-Fi Direct compatible printer, you only need to press a button on the printer to find a wifi device (the PC, for example) to establish a connection.
On the computer, a window will appear on the printer application to activate the connection.
Wi-Fi Direct then creates a connection between two devices that uses a protocol called Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) .
So, in summary, to create a Wifi-Direct connection on one device there must be the activation function, on the other, if it is not Wifi-Direct-enabled, it is not essential that it is there, as long as there is software available to receive the connection.
For example, it is possible to transfer files at high speed from one Android smartphone to another, to a tablet or to the PC with the Super Sharing application.
Android smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy have the Wifi-Direct function integrated in S Beam which integrates the NFC connection to Wi-Direct to exchange a file (on Android 4 and above go to Settings> Wi-Fi> Menu / Wi-Fi Direct )
Apple's AirDrop is an iOS 7 feature on iPhone and iPad that uses Wi-Fi Direct to share files between two devices anywhere, always without the need for a router or an active internet connection.
On Wifi-Direct PCs it is possible but you must have a compatible network card.
Wi-Fi Direct still remains a promising feature, included in modern Android and iOS operating systems, which surely in the future will be used by more and more devices for direct wifi connections.
At the moment it is only one way of making specific products communicate with each other, but it is not used for low energy devices such as the mouse and wireless keyboards that still use Bluetooth.
