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IBM Does Bluetooth On Linux
Frank Carlos writes: "IBM released Linux-based applications technology based on the Bluetooth specification called BlueDrekar, which is a reference implementation of and a set of interfaces for the Bluetooth protocol stack. You can get the Transport Drivers for BlueDrekar(TM) Middleware at the developerWorks Open Source Zone."
If you wanted to do something like this you'd have to come up with some way to tie the device to the system in question's bus.
If you can find a Bluetooth ISA card (ha ha) and a GG2+ bridgecard and stick it in your A2000 or A2500, then you should be able to write a driver.
I don't know what you'd have to do to stick it in a ZX Spectrum.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The tran sport driver is cetainly a welcome contribution: even if it only covers UART it is a valuable reference inplementation released under the GPL.
But I'm not so sure about BlueDrekar itself. Maybe it is just my natural schepticism against closed source implementations, and maybe it is just the single obviously IBM sponsored evaluation that makes me unhappy, but:
Would you license it? (Maybe here is a topic for a /. poll...) Or do you feel that a free implementation is required before this technology will be implemented in volume?
I think Bluetooth is a neat technology, but I guess it is still some way off general availability.
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"Where do you come from?"
Hi!
Actually, it's more like how a 3c905 doesn't define any network protocols, because it's just a NIC. You can run netbeui, ipx, tcp/ip, appletalk, or what have you. There's no reason whatsoever that bluetooth shouldn't be the same.
Mind you, bluetooth will probably end up with several different network protocols. (Sorry, I never memorized the burrito's ingredients, so I'm going to speak in layman's terms.) Obviously lots of people will be interested in doing TCP/IP, over which they will almost certainly use DHCP for autoconfiguration. Since they're using TCP/IP they'll get into DNS pretty much by default. So these are all things we can be fairly sure will be present on a significant number of bluetooth devices.
The up side of this is that most of this is present on PDAs already, like the palmpilot, WinCE devices, and so on. They should all be able to interoperate fairly conveniently. Pick your device, do a DHCP request to autoconfigure, starting with LINK-LOCAL addresses, and whoever hears a request first (which probably means that they're the first to send but the other device wasn't ready) sets an IP (in the reserved range) and then serves the other machine's DHCP request.
You could well use simpler protocols like Microsoft's NetBEUI. In fact, on a non-internet-connected LAN made up of only Windows machines, NetBEUI is my default protocol of choice, because it's small and fast, has basically no overhead, and works without any configuration at all (At least, that the user has to see) so perhaps that's the best idea for use on Bluetooth, but since it's only implemented on Windows AFAIK, it's not bloody likely to become a standard. IPX would be another choice, but it's fallen out of favor in recent years, and it's not available on the majority of palmtops in any case.
Regardless of what protocol you choose, it should be TCP/IP :) TCP/IP is the only one that's available in basically every location. Hell, you can make an IBM PC-XT speak TCP/IP with either old dos software, or geoworks. If an XT can do it, I'm sold :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hey look, it's Sisko. I bet he hates that.
You know, if the commercial is in quicktime, how are you going to get moderated up? Everyone knows that linux users can't see them (ha ha). And yes, I know that's not always true, so b1t3 m3.
Frankly, I agree with previous posts; IBM just doesn't get it. Linux doesn't need advertising and it doesn't need a man in a turtleneck speaking like he thinks he's Shaft to tell people how badass it is. What it needs is for IBM to get off their ass and get to PORTING all that cool AIX crap (Not the crappy crap, just the cool stuff) to linux, get it running, and make it even more commercially viable. Save your money, don't spend it on ads; Hire more programmers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bluetooth is being touted as two things. The first is as a replacement for wires. This is certainly happening now. But just because you can string a wire between two devices doesn't mean they'll talk to each other.
The second thing Bluetooth is being touted as is a way to do dynamic networking, and it will make everything talk to everything. However, even TCP/IP isn't included in the spec, so some devices my choose to not support it. In the area of service discovery, there are there different standards that are being pushed... Sun's, Microsoft's, and an open group pushing Salutation. I like Jini the best because its drivers can be used on any platform and the devices can carry their drivers with them. But it doesn't specify a common transport.
Bluetooth seems to only make the Physical, DataLink, and Network layers standard. With more than half of the 7 layer burrito in limbo, I don't know how the protocol stack can hold up.
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Bluetooth is IrLA on steriods - it isn't line of site, being RF, it can go 10 to 100 meters, and it supports 7 nodes per master radio. They call that a piconet, beyound that you can connect a number of piconets. Not too bad for wiring a wireless home, one piconet per room.
There is a set of "profiles" that are specs on how to communicate between boxes. The profiles I know of are
Generic Access Profile
Service Discovery Profile Application Profile
Cordless Telephony Profile
Intercom Profile
Serial Port profile
Headset Profile
Dial-up Networking Profile
Fax Profile
Lan Access Profile
Generic Object Exchange Profile
Object Push Profile
File Transfer Profile
Synchronization Profile
Looks like a good start to me ... the protocol is royality free, the specs (~1500 pages) on CD do cost $100 - something of a bummer, but you can get them on-line at www.bluetooth.com
... but (unlike ethernet) it's intended for use over very small distances between mobile devices, replacing IrDA. For example, to allow your mobile phone to act as a modem for your organiser or your laptop. It doesn't require line-of-sight, it isn't designed to be very high-bandwidth, and it intentionally doesn't have enough range to be a substitute for wireless ethernet. As for why you should be interested: absolutely no reason. If you aren't, don't read the article.
The Bluetooth Spec, Vol. 2 Profiles describes a Generic Object Exchange Profile. There are a couple of sub-profiles, Object Push and Synchronization that will describe transferring varioius data objects. vObjects (vCard, vCalendard, , etc objects) can be transferred.
The idea is that both the sender and receiver understand the type of object that is being transferred, where it should go and how to use it.
The Synchronization profile describes a method of synchronizing a desktop PC with a PDA, for instance.
http://www-4.ibm.com /software/is/mp/linux/audio/ibm_linux-02.avi
;-) enjoy.
Check out this cool Linux commercial from IBM. You know you've made it when you get prime time advertisement! ;-)
:(
btw the commercial is in quicktime
-Ben
For the listeners tuning in at home, Linux now has the following Bluetooth stacks:
Now how am I supposed to get the Linux USB Bluetooth driver to play nice with all of these?
Well it could be worse, we could have no Bluetooth stacks for Linux at all!
Wait a second, maybe I have this whole OSI stack thing wrong...
-- flipping quickly through refrence books--
Lets see.... layers. Now why would some of the smartest brains in networking make a model based on layers? Thats a mystery....
Come on now. The entire point is that every single layer is independent of each other. Bluetooth is a layer 1 device. Thats a physical layer device for the networking deficent out there. They don't give a rats ass about the other six layers. Thats not their problem as long as they provide the appropriate API.
The hardware doesn't care what protocol is passed across. Maybe it does Ethernet, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it does IP, maybe it doesn't. Bluetooth doesn't care. They provide a way to transmit a bit from point A to point B, and then someone else has to figure out how this bits are arranged.
Bluetooth is a Godsend for the networking industry because *finally* someone has created an open standard for wireless. And it takes alot for me to say this since my company has succesfully marketed a propriatary wireless solution. If you want better content transfer, then write a better protocol.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
Why broadcast on a (mostly) P-T-P network??
I don't understand why people keep calling Bluetooth Vapourware when so many implementations and devices exist. It might not be available to the consumer but Bluetooth works fine.
Also, check out the kick ass TDK Bluetooth devices.
-- null
How Stuff Works has a great set of articles explaining how bluetooth works in english. Much simpler than reading through the 1500 page specsheets. How Bluetooth Works
* with enough resourses, nothing is secure.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensou rce/tp4bluedrekar/?open&l=sdot,t=gr,p=bd rk
Anyone else notice the l=sdot in there? Since it was submitted by someone at IBM, it would seem that they want to track specifically how many people visit the site after reading it on Slashdot. Conspiracy? Its probably a good thing, since its bound to get tons of visitors and maybe make IBM consider releasing even more software for Linux.
A wireless net
But I still trip on the cord.
Silly palm pilot.
Bluetooth is a common wireless standard for passing bits between devices. Think of it as the combination of Ethernet hardware and TCP/IP for wireless.
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
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remotin` my little sun serverz with it
lookin` forward
Two
You may be thinking that I'm out of my mind - after all, Bluetooth is an open standard, right? But Bluetooth is nothing more than a way to pass bits and bytes. It can't make my Pilot actually speak intellegently to my Linux box. Sure, it can pass data, but what to do with it?
So far, there has been no standardization for content protocols over Bluetooth. The only "standard" that could be considered close is wrapping TCP/IP, from which you can get HTTP, XML, etc. for passing data. However, Bluetooth as it stands is not going to be the be-all and end-all of information transfer, because there is no common format.
What's needed is a common implementation of a method for applications to speak to each other over an open protocol. No manufacturers have been forthcoming about this. Instead, we see fracturing of devices, unable to actually speak to each other.
Until there is a common format, Bluetooth will fail. I hope someone will take the initaive to create an open standard for content transfer.
Yes, this is off-topic, but the question came up last night and this is about a wireless system on Linux, so here goes...
Do drivers exist, or are they being worked on, for any of the myriad home-networking systems you can buy off the shelf these days? I was looking at the Intel Anypoint 1.6Mbps USB towers. They also have 10Mbps PCI cards that use the 2nd twisted pair in a phone jack--but I have two phone lines so that is out.
Diamond also has home wireless and supposedly Dell is marketing some wireless PCI cards now. All of these ship with Win9x drivers. I'm wanting to run Linux on the computer where the cable modem will come in and then go wireless from there to 2-3 Win9x boxes. Is there any way to do this currently?
IBM is only releasing binaries. How useless. Try the Linux Bluetooth page for source code under GPL.
The links in the original post seems to be corrupted -- here they are again:
Can somebody fix the original?
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"Where do you come from?"
Hi!