Linux Running Bluetooth Access Points

quick_dry_3 writes: "A few days ago I saw Red-M give the first demo of their Bluetooth access point, basically its an x86 Linux box with bluetooth, looks pretty cool too - the extenders look like silver soap holders, they only have to be given power if they're inside main units range. Range was claimed to be 100m from each unit, they demoed it with a PalmV + Bluetooth PC card. Pricey at just under US$3000 though ... They reckon an 802.11 card flattened a Palm in 2.5 minutes, but Bluetooth gave only a slight dent in normal life."

Comments

Re:Great

[interiot]

Amen.

Bluetooth is for PANs, not LANs. It's for devices with low memory and slow displays. Rule of thumb: Bluetooth is good for devices that use AAA batteries or less (base stations excepted, of course).
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What the...

[AFCArchvile]

"They reckon an 802.11 card flattened a Palm in 2.5 minutes, but Bluetooth gave only a slight dent in normal life."

Wait a minute. Are they actually using these cards as intended or are they just whacking a Palm Pilot with the network adapters?

Re:Wireless on Linux

[matthew.thompson]

But these are technologies with different aims.

802.11(whatever) was designed as a replacement for the ethernet wires that connect two PCs.
Bluetooth was designed to replace the parallel, serial, IrDA and other short range low power links between devices.

Note devices. One use for Bluetooth that the mobile phone makers Ericsson are touting is a cordless Bluetooh headset for your mobile phone, removing the transmitter from your brain and allowing easier movement etc. Another is Palm to phone connectivity, no more lining your Palm V's IrDA port up with that of your Nokia 7110 phone

One of the great ideas - although wether it would ever take off or not is another matter is micro lans which allow broadcast environmental information to be displayed on compatible devices. Imagine walking into an airport and instead of looking up at the TV screens you look down at your Palm organiser which shows you where your plane is boarding and that it's 5 minutes late. It knows the flight number because you told it and when you arrived at the airport you entered their Microlan and your Palm interroageted their systems.

All this would be possible with 802.11 but the hardware necessary and the power drain of a Medium ot long range protocol would make it bulky or impractacle(sp?).

What is the price of the bits?

[Bazzargh]

I've been looking with avarice at Bluetooth stuff for a while, but can't see any kit that comes even close to the $5 (USD) per module price they originally aimed at.
Ericsson don't quote a price for their module (the one IBM used), but StoneStreetOne (http://stonestreetone.com/bluetooth/) sell something closer to a bit of kit you could actually use, and its a THOUSAND DOLLARS. Heck at least they give a price!
According to at least one article (http://inf2.pira.co.uk/top040.htm#bt) the price of the Ericsson SDK+2 boards is £9000 (Uk Pounds). CSR apparently quote $8/unit for quantities >1m, but their SDK+2 is $8000 too (http://www.cambridgesiliconradio.com/develop.htm)

With prices still this high can the forecasts of 50-100 million shipped products by mid 2001 be anything but pie in the sky? (http://www.the-arc-group.com/reports/future_mobil e_handsets/presentation/sld008.htm) . I reckon it'll be more like 5-10 million, consisting wholly or mainly of Ericsson phones.

It looks like Bluetooth development will be out of the question for anyone but corporates for at least another year... :o(

Open standard?

[Snowfox]

Is Bluetooth a free and open standard or is it closed or licensed?

I'm wondering if we're looking at a free-like-USB or a for-pay-like-Firewire situation here. Considering Firewire's technical merits but tiny market share, the above consideration seems to be a pretty good indicator of its relevance.

I don't get it

[Auckerman]

There is a general rule of thumb when it comes to buying new toys. The more complex the toy is, technologically speak, the more components there are to fail. What happens when you have all your mp3's on a wireless harddrive for your house, with three computers all detecting and using it, dies? If it's just the case, that's going to be a lot more expensive to replace than an external harddrive. What happen's when someone doesn't set up their wireless home network "right" and their neighbor can see all their pr0n, or better yet, their Quicken data file.

I'm not about to broadcast my business over the airwaves, even if it does have Linux "support".

Linux sneaking in

[cluge]

With Linux having a Bluetooth server, linux again makes inroads into the lucrative server market. With "mobile" and "wireless" becoming the new big bad buzzwords it's nice to see a Linux solution. Competitors and specifically MS should be worried if this takes off. That would mean that even CE devices don't have to be tied to an NT/2000/ME backend. Hopefully this means that large groups of mobile users will be tied to a Linux back end.

Here's how to do this with 802.11

[Ross Finlayson]

FYI, if you don't want to wait for Bluetooth (or if you want more range than Bluetooth gives you, and don't mind the extra power consumption), then it's quite straightforward to use a Linux (or FreeBSD, or other Unix) box as a 802.11 base station.

For more details, see http://www.live.com/wireless /un ix-base-station.html