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Having read the announcement about google nearby 2.0 it's clear that WiFi connections are supported.

Nearby Connections uses WiFi, Bluetooth LE & Classic Bluetooth under the hood to discover and establish connections to nearby devices.

Or from the docs overview page

Under the hood, the API uses a combination of Bluetooth, BLE, and Wifi hotspots

What I'm not clear on is whether the WiFi support is exclusively when devices are connected to the same WiFi router, or whether the service will also use WiFi P2P (aka WiFi Direct) to establish connections when possible.

My experience using similar services on other platforms is that bluetooth connections can often be too slow for fast paced multiplayer games. My title already supports connections over WiFi routers, so ideally I'd want the service to add WiFi play in the absence of a router.

Arnold Schrijver
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Columbo
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2 Answers2

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I think my question is answered in the I/O talk about Nearby Connections refresh (link).

We connect over bluetooth and start transferring data instantly, but in the background we also bring up a WiFi hotspot, and when that's ready we seamlessly transfer your connection from bluetooth to WiFi with absolutely no work required by the app developer

I'm reasonably confident from the context that the WiFi hotspot they're talking about is an Adhoc/Direct/P2P one (not sure of the correct terminology, but mobile to mobile WiFi of some sort) rather than a physical router.

Columbo
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The announcement says

At I/O this year, we spoke about a refresh to the Nearby Connections API that can provide high bandwidth, low latency, encrypted data transfers between nearby devices in a fully-offline P2P manner. Today we're announcing the availability of this API across all Android devices running Google Play services 11.0 and up.

Its fully offline and P2P so it looks like that there is no need for them to be connected to the same wifi router.

Colwin
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  • But the offline capabilities could be based on bluetooth rather than WiFi P2P. I'm concerned that if its bluetooth alone then it may not have the speed necessary for a fast-paced game - ideally (from my POV) it'd be WiFi P2P when possible but with a fallback to bluetooth if WiFi P2P is not available. – Columbo Aug 01 '17 at 11:00
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    Agreed. I can't find any more documentation that details the fallback scenarios at the moment. – Colwin Aug 01 '17 at 11:01