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Bluetooth Wireless Devices Delayed
Sean Fitzpatrick writes: "From this article on www.arizonarepublic.com:
The future has been postponed, at least slightly. Bluetooth, the wireless technology to link computers, home entertainment appliances and other gadgets will not debut this summer as some manufacturers had hoped.
Story at http://www.arizon arepublic.com/news/articles/0721bluetoothon.html (free registration required)." The registration isn't too onerous, but be warned: it's a short article. The upshot is that Bluetooth won't arrive to Jes' Folks until at least the (actual) turn of the century, according to Joyce Putscher, director of a an Arizona research firm called Cahners In-Stat Group, and "several [unnamed] manufacturers." A shame, but when was the last time cool technology arrived conspicously early? If wishes were horses, then we'd already have Bluetooth.
> ...wireless ethernet. It does EVERYTHING bluetooth is suppose to...
Bluetooth is more than just wireless networking. In fact, it's more like USB than ethernet. The protocol is short-range (~10m, boosted signals to ~100m) with many devices, plug&play style negotiation, etc. While it *can* replace 802.11 type wireless in many cases, that's not really the goal.
Two simple examples; these are both specific app targets of the Bluetooth SIG:
- Wireless headsets for cellphones. Having ethernet in a phone is overkill, let along in an earphone/mic headset.
- Using a cellphone as a modem for a laptop/PDA. The idea is simple: without taking your phone out of your pocket/purse/holster/etc, or plugging anything in, you can dial through it as a modem. Using a full ethernet implementation, the phone would have to act as a gateway, rather than a "dumb" modem.
Add to those ideas wireless keyboards and mice, and places where IR is currently used (PDA data transfer, for example). There's even some talk that Bluetooth could replace X10 as the home-automation protocol of choice.
I'd refer you to the Bluetooth SIG site for more info, but it seems to be dead. Sigh. Hunting around on the various members (Ericsson, IBM, and Intel come to mind) sites might turn up something.
Drinking will help us plan!
YuNicks sez:
Nonsense: there's 802.11b, already running and on the ground. Coupled with IPv6 and the QoS guarantees it has, tell me what I can do with Bluetooth that I can't do with wireless Ethernet?
Bluetooth is NOT a wireless networking protocol. It's a wireless cabling protocol. Sure, it can do some of the same things, but it isn't intended for the massive amounts of data that pass through an Ethernet connection, but instead for the piddling bits and bytes that pass from keyboards to PCs and such. Bluetooth is low-power and will be adaptable to PDAs and cell phones; 802.11 last I heard required at the very least a PCMCIA card.
They're intended for entirely different purposes and situations; don't even think of them as competitors. 802.11 offers, as you note, the kinds of QOS -- throughput, robustness, security -- that corporations require to connect up laptops. It will make office networking much easier. Bluetooth isn't about that; it's about getting all the piddly little electronic toys you use to interoperate, exchange address books, and such.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Bluetooth isn't going to be any cure-all. It's not going to provide anything we don't already have, "network connections". It's supposed to bring about a standardized communications portal for all things technological. But what really will be communicating? And how many of these devices can you have in a room before they get overloaded?
This is all vapor. It's all hype for a product that doesn't exist. It doesn't stop people from using OmniSky or Ricochet. If anything it's an excuse for why devices aren't more networkable, "We're waiting for Bluetooth, you heard the hype - we should wait!".
Joseph Elwell.
Bluetooth is NOT a wireless networking protocol. It's a wireless cabling protocol.....802.11 last I heard required at the very least a PCMCIA card.
So I'm guessing bluetooth will only require a small chip...Hmm, yeah, the first thing anybody's going to want to do is abuse the technology with this is try and network their computers this way-but then again, there's the people who have been storming up ideas to network between 2 houses, there was even an "Ask Slashdot" involving it... but if the power consumption of the bluetooth chips is low enough that they can put it in cell phone/PDA/relativly low power devices, then wouldn't this be feasable to buy about 4 of these devices, plug a couple of AA batteries/9v batteries, stick them in a ziplock bag, and hang them in the trees (as repeaters) between your house and your friends, get a bluetooth device hooked up to each of your computer's serial ports, and finally be able to play Quake with sombody over a LAN-type connection? I'm sure this wouldn't be anywhere near as fast as actual T1/10bT, but even a null modem connection/speed would be pretty spiff.
moox. for a new generation.
It takes a very superficial view to compare BlueTooth and 802.11. True, they both transmit bits wirelessly, but so do many other systems. It's like comparing Ethernet and USB - one is a network and the other is a bus.
If you look at the specs behind these standards you'll see that the part that deals with actually delivering the bits over the wireless link is quite small. The protocols, application and presentation layer are much bigger. They present a different set of services to the user. They also have a very different mindset and corporate culture begind them, like USB and 1394 - one is PC centric and the other is heavily influenced by the consumer electronics world.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
BLuetooth and 802.11b are not even in the same ballpark. They are totally different technologies for totally different purposes.
802.11b is the wireless extension of ethernet; it's for doing real networking.
Bluetooth is extremely short range, extremely low power, and desigend for applications similiar to IRDA. Short-range, low-speed communications. From your cellphone to your PDA. From your PDA to a nearby printer, etc...
Bluetooth exists as a single (or pair) of chips, containing all the radio transmitters and everything. THe idea is that a manufacturer can 'bluetooth enable' a device for like $5/device.
802.11 is MUCH higher power, and totally unsuitable for this kind of thing.
Anyone who suggests bluetooth is for 'wireless newtorking' is full of it.
Rookie mistake. ;-) On rereading how could I make that particular goof?
All three standards, 802.11, Bluetooth, and HomeRF, use radio frequencies.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Also, try playing with IR. I've got a TRGpro and a Kodak DC265 that talk to my PC using IR. Not quite as magic as RF, but hopefully you can get to the end of the year without shelling out $2k for a developer's kit.
Just take it one day at a time and you'll make it...
I'll agree with that in this case.
Rumours were floating around a while back there was some minor glitches found with the bluetooth spec or implementation. Something to do with not gracefully handling fallback when hundreds of bluetooth devices were all within sight of each other. There was a slight change to make it all work better, and it looks like it was decided to go ahead and incorporate the change before ramping up production.
If that's the case, we need to applaud motorola and ericson for taking a responsible action. This will only make the product better. Its not like they are going to be losing that critical market share by slipping a few months, there are no other players with anything close to bluetooth right now.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Who cares about bluetooth?
I use an airport card & airport base station -- aka wireless ethernet. It does EVERYTHING bluetooth is suppose to be able, does it now, does it correctly, & is relatively cheap. Why wait? Many companies, such as Farallon and 3Com make the cards (PC or PCI) & base stations. Get one today.
We don't need no stinking bluetooth. Especially since it's not ready yet.
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
You're right, 802.11 does use the same frequencies as Bluetooth. However, lots of folks have realized this and 802.15 is supposed to be a new standard, based on Bluetooth that's (more) compatible with 802.11. If you want to read the nitty gritty about what effect a bunch of Bluetooth tranceivers have on a 801.11 network, take a look at this: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/15/pub/1999/Sep 99/Misc/BT-80211-Coexist.ppt The presentation only talks about the effect that BT has on 802.11, not the other way around. If I read this correctly, even with a bunch of BT piconets, 802.11 can keep chugging away. However, I wonder if the lower power BT signals will get blasted out of the sky by 802.11 packets.
Nonsense: there's 802.11b, already running and on the ground. Coupled with IPv6 and the QoS guarantees it has, tell me what I can do with Bluetooth that I can't do with wireless Ethernet?
And at this rate, by the time Bluetooth comes out, there will already be 802.11c devices on line, running at 40Mb/sec.
Can't wait for Bluetooth? Then look into HomeRF. It's a mid-level wireless protocol that isn't going to be an IEEE standard and will probably eventually disappear, positioned as it is somewhere between the device-level connectivity of Bluetooth and the robust networking of 802.11b.
...
Mainly available to consumers in the form of Intel Anypoint and running at 1.6Mpbs, it's a decent solution for SOHO and hobbyist applications, and most important, it's in stores now, where a one-PC kit (no cards, USB pluggable) retails for around $60.
The minimal 802.11b "wireless ethernet" (or "Wi-Fi", ecch) configuration right now requires an expensive ($200-1500) base unit that's basically an Ethernet hub with robust IR ports, as well as IR Ethernet cards (~$100) for each PC to be connected. This will be fine for professional environments, who will demand the 11Mpbs throughput, but a bit steep for most consumers. (FYI, 802.11 is the protocol that Apple Airport and its PC sibling, Lucent's Orinoco, as well as future products like Cisco Aironet and 3Com AirConnect, run. For reasons probably related to "Steve Jobs", Airport base stations plus card can be had for as little as $400 total, while Orinoco and other companies' PC-compatible offerings run $1000 and up for essentially the same equipment. If all 802.11 products were available at the Airport price level, there would be no market for HomeRF at all.)
OK, if you are one of those "only the highest possible bandwidth will do" users, you will want to jump straight to the wireless ethernet offering, damn the pricetag. But for most people the most taxing thing they'll run is web-browsing, gameplaying, or Napstering, and since 1.6Mpbs is superior to almost any home internet connection, it won't bottleneck you. HomeRF gives you freedom of movement in your apartment or even backyard if you like for a reasonable cost.
I do expect Bluetooth to ultimately take over this market, since it will be available on many more devices than just computers, and may finally make things like remotely programmable air conditioners an affordable reality.
Bottom line: there are three wireless standards out there, and you're advised to read labels carefully the next couple of years. Me, I'll be trawling the 10%-off-returns shelves at Micro Center
[Disclaimer: I can't report yet on how well it works, I've just looked closely at the product so far.]
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The bluetooth marketing ppl say the bluetooth device hops over interference. whatever. You will collide with other devices, and when you do you lose packets. Bluetooth survives because:
1. The protocol is tolerant of heavy packet loss.
2. Bluetooth has an aggressive frequency hopping algorithm to minimize packet loss. Each packet is sent on a different frequency; bluetooth units hop amongst 79 frequencies, and there are 1600 hops per second.
The FUD is out there. People say bluetooth will fail if an 802.11 device gets within 100 feet; they say bluetooth devices may not even work with each other when they hit the shelves. But do you really believe that the people working full time to bring these devices to market haven't considered any of this? Of course they have. The bluetooth spec addresses these issues. When you buy your first bluetooth device, it's probably going to work ok. It's not like it's a Microsoft product, you know?
I'm a QoS specialist at a vendor of policy-based QoS management software - trust me, nobody is going to migrate to IPv6 for QoS purposes.
IPv6 has precisely one extra feature for QoS beyond IPv4 - the flow label, which helps reduce classification load in core routers in RSVP networks. This is a rather unlikely scenario, for details see the RSVP over DiffServ drafts at http://www.ietf.org, in the issll group.
Apart from this one feature, all standard QOS features such as DiffServ, RSVP, COPS, COPS-PR, etc, will work identically in IPv4 and IPv6. The sole speed advantage of IPv6 is its more regular header structure; its disadvantage is that more memory references will be needed for each forwarding and classification decision, so there'll need to be good ASIC or network processor support (as in Intel's IXA architecture) before IPv6 can really take off. However, I expect IPv6 to happen within 2-5 years.
IMO people will migrate to IPv6 to support mobile IP efficiently (its routing header lets you efficiently route to mobile nodes without risking source address spoofing), huge user populations (think millions of mobile phones, tablets, cable modem/ADSL users, etc), and for ease of re-addressing (think companies that are merging or divesting business units).
802.11b is a completely different technology to Bluetooth, with much greater range, about 10 times the bandwidth, and greater power consumption. Not at all comparable to Bluetooth.
Bluetooth devices do exist. I used one from Cambridge Silicon, but it was big and clunky, (each transciever was an oval about 6 inches across) still far too big to put in any sort of handheld or portable device. They just don't exist for the consumer *right now*.
The news put forth in this article is nothing new- it is pretty common knowledge in the wireless arena that *everybody* is having trouble with their bluetooth solution. But it is not an easy problem to solve. The original delivery dates were far, far too optimistic, but everybody in the industry realizes that the first company to put out a good solution is going to make a boatload of money. #2 and so on will make money, but just not as much.
Bluetooth is a great idea, but it is having some growing pains. The first thing, nobody is able to make a single chip solution (yet). For Bluetooth to work, it has to be small. No one is going to accept a 1 pound headset. Second, it has to be low power, so batteries can last a reasonable time.
The developers kit I used was good- we got 70Kbit/s with the devices about 10 feet apart, through a couple of walls, but it still needed work. There was absolutely no security, once you were connected you could write any sort of information to the other computer (though you couldn't specify where). It did connect flawlessly and work as advertized- but as a developers kit/demo, it cost a heck of a lot- upwards of $10K (I think), possibly as much as $25K.
Bluetooth isn't a cure-all, you're not going to want your internet connection through Bluetooth, or anything that requires a lot of bandwidth. It just isn't fast enough, but for things like syncing your palm pilot, or connecting your cellular phone to your palm pilot, it will be great.
Bluetooth wireless technology will be part of a portfolio of wireless technologies.
Most 'designs' in life have trade offs - this is why you don't buy a sofa chair just for outdoor entertaining, nor do you buy a truck just to drive around town, nor do you buy an industrial grinder for home coffee. Some people do, but the large majority of people don't. Most people buy on some combination of factors, in which price is often quite important.
These same economic and design trade offs are visible in wireless communications, and is why Bluetooth will exist alongside 802.11b, mobile internet and so on. It would be great (from an academic and technical perspective) if there could be one unified standard that could scale up and down and do everything - perhaps that is the aim for 3G devices ? But I don't see that happening for another 10 years at least.
For Home Area Networks (HAN) and Personal Area Networks (PAN), competition is significantly built upon price differences. It is waste of money, time and effort to embed a high power technology (e.g. a GSM phone) into a consumer device (e.g. a washing machine).
Bluetooth is specifically designed for PANs - connections between phones, computers, printers, car alarms, remote controls, and other products that did incorporate infra-red or messy cables. Apart from IrDA, there is no standard in this area yet - and Bluetooth is filling that gap.
Bluetooth will probably be pushed into HANs - because it is ideally suited for household and office consumer devices, and recent developments to scale up the air interface will allow it to transport higher bandwidth multimedia information. I can (eventually) envisage Bluetooth in medical equipment as well. I can see Bluetooth coupled with Jini and other collaborative agent technologies.
When it comes to the home: I think the household will end up having an information gateway - high speed information pipe to the rest of the world. Within the house, Bluetooth will be one of the major wireless technologies, but there will need to be a higher bandwidth technology for inter-home computing and entertainment systems - I can't even see a highspeed Bluetooth providing this, but maybe I'll eat my words in the near future. Perhaps Bluetooth will interact with one of the HomeRF solutions, but I personally think that the HomeRF solutions out there are dead inlight of Bluetooth.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
Centuries turn between '99 and '00. Millenia turn between '00 and '01.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I'd rather wait and get a wireless system that works than get one that doesn't. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to troubleshoot communication problems between two bluetooth devices? It's not like you can ensure they're physically connected the way your keyboard is to your computer case. Let's hope the delay is worthwhile!
Debut of futuristic wireless technology delayed
By Jonathan Sidener
The Arizona Republic
July 21, 2000
The future has been postponed, at least slightly. Bluetooth, the wireless technology to link computers, home entertainment appliances and other gadgets will not debut this summer as some manufacturers had hoped.
"This is a technology that's going to affect thousands and thousands of products," said Joyce Putscher, director for converging markets and technologies research for Cahners In-Stat Group in Scottsdale. "With any emerging technology, especially one with such far-reaching ramifications, they're making sure all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed."
Putscher and several manufacturers say consumers will have to wait until the end of the year for the promising wireless technology.
Bluetooth uses tiny, inexpensive short-range radios to connect digital devices. Any Bluetooth device can talk to any other, no matter what brand name is on the label or what software forms their operating systems.
Motorola is making Bluetooth chips for its cellular phones and for outside customers. The company plans to make the chips in the Valley.
Initially, Bluetooth would be used to untether us from the wires that connect our computers and other devices. Wireless connections between headsets and cell phones and between desktop and laptop computers are expected to be among the first products to market.
More advanced applications are expected to create personal networks, with devices communicating differently for different people, sending Mr. Jones e-mail from the PC to his handheld computer, for example, and routing Mrs. Jones' e-mail to hers.
cypherpunks/cypherpunks works as always.
the AntiCypher
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
No, really. We've spent the last ten years plowing out tech at such an incredible rate that first-or-close-second-to-market has become a priority over other considerations such as quality, reliability etc. We're starting to see a backlash against that mentality in the non-OSS secotor (OSS has more of a to-market-when-I-get-around-to-it mentality) at long last. First OS X shows a slipping release date, despite DP4 demonstrating that it clearly works and could probably be pushed to market soonish. Now Bluetooth, which also works "well enough" to meet the current standard of quality, is rolled back. More time = better product. So I'm happy with the delay.
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