Bluetooth Bombs

Carey sent in this story that shows Bluetooth still has a few kinks to work out. Bluetooth's universal standard instead seems to be about 10 different standards, and if these companies think they are going get people to buy devices that only work with other devices from the same manufacturer, I think they're in for a rude awakening.

Comments

clever!

[dotaubob]

The challenge, however, is making sure all Bluetooth products can communicate with each other

This speaks for itself!!

Lets make a network that won't work, then show everyone how it doesn't work......

Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world?

[kristan]

I work in the mobile industry (where Bluetooth is heralded as a great technology), but I honestly don't see a need for Bluetooth in a world where we already have a great short distance wireless technology - 802.11
I think the delays involved in launching Bluetooth (we've been hearing about it for a few years now) have caused it to become a great technology looking for a problem to solve. It is a nice technology - low power, inexpensive chipsets, etc. But, I don't believe it is a long term viable technology.
Having said that, I still predict that lots of first adopters will buy Bluetooth enabled pens, phones, laptops, etc.

Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, $5 per device for Bluetooth enabling (in quantity)... how much is it for 802.11 ? If 802.11 is good enough then pray tell why is it not being embedded in everything from cell phones to laptops to network appliances.

Bluetooth has a market (wire replacement), it's cheap, it's low power, it can become ubiquitous. The problem has been there for years, get rid of wires. 802.11 does not fix this problem. Bluetooth can for just about everything but your video and landline network connection.

The incompatibilities are because of the usual crap between countries and companies. Part of the same reason that we have competing incompatible regional cellular networks. Hopefully it'll get fixed to the point where it's "good enough".

Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world?

[alhaz]

WE all think it would be great as a wire eliminator, but unfortunately Ericsson doesn't want it to be used for that, won't talk to anyone who does, and it's their baby.

Ericsson's only application so far is advertisng. That's right, you're walking down the street, you pass a Coke machine, your cell phone goes 'blip blip!' and a text message asks you if you're thirsty. You're walking through the mall, you pass Victoria's Secret, your cell phone goes 'blip blip!' and informs you that thong underwear is half off. You're crusing down the freeway, you pass a billboard and . . . you get the idea. And they literally want it to go "blip blip" - go look at http://www.ericsson.com/blip .

Do YOU want your cell phone going "blip blip" and offering you advertisments two thousand times a day?

And they SAY it only costs $5 per unit in quantity, but since nobody is manufacturing anything in quantity, the cost is right on par with 802.11b at the moment.

This is a non-story

[SClitheroe]

Every new technology has its teething problems.

Does anybody remember the bad old days of CR-R's? Some drives could read CDR's, other's couldn't. Some machines could read stuff burnt at 4x, other's couldn't. Nowadays, there isn't a drive out there that can't handle CDR's.

For that matter, does anybody remember the bad old days of BIOS'es? Certain OS's like OS/2 required you to have a particular revision, or higher (the AMI BIOSs were particularly bad with OS/2).

How about bi-directional printers. Do any of you remember the heartache when your first inkjet didn't work correctly because you only had a uni-directional printer port?

How about DVD's? There was a time (and there may still be) when certain players couldn't handle certain discs.

How about BIOS support for large IDE devices? Do any of you remember the disappointment when your onboard controller couldn't handle a drive larger than 8 gigs?

How about 5 1/4 floppy drives? Remember not being able to read 360kb formated floppies in certain high density drives?

The list goes on and on...

Bluetooth is at least as complex, and probably more so, than any of these technologies. The manufacturers will get this sorted out in time.

The bleeding edge is exactly that - bloody. And as they say, you can tell who the pioneers are by the arrows in their backs. Don't slag a technology when it's in its infancy, just because things aren't working perfectly yet.

Re:This is a non-story

[MrShiny]

So because the computer industry has fucked up on standards many times before, it's ok for them to do it again? I love this quote from the article:

"Right now, the standard is defined, but companies are using different specifications"

Translation: Right now, the standard is defined, but companies are so busy madly rushing products out the door that they don't bother following the specs or doing any compatibility testing.

I'm sick and tired of buying a shiny new upgrade and then finding out it doesn't work with my computer because:

1. the person who made the component didn't follow the spec
2. the person who made the thing it plugs into didn't follow the spec
3. the spec is not complete

I was really excited when I bought my TNT2 until I plugged it into my LX mobo and found out the AGP slot didn't provide enough voltage to drive the card. If this were any other kind of product, it would be considered defective.

Re:This is a non-story

[sjames]

Every new technology has its teething problems.

In the proprietary world, they are much much worse. The more profit the players anticipate, the worse the problem gets.

The various internet protocols haven't be plagued with nearly that much trouble. At a time when it was so cutting edge that it wasn't even on the corperate radar, it managed to reconcile entirely different character sets and notions of how numbers were stored so that machines that were never intended to interoperate routinely did so. If in doubt, the RFC was the final authority. If the RFC was unclear, this was discussed, and a clarifying RFC was issued to settle the matter.

In the world of proprietary specs, a bunch of companies all haggle and fight over the spec from day 1. Most of the arguements center on "We think it should be this way, and since we're the bestest and the most deserving, you will bow down to our greatness and like it". The result tends to be an ill defined 'standard' with miles of wiggle room and dozens of companies that convince themselves that their ideas were adopted as the cannonical standard.

Rather than holding a quiet bake off where early prototypes are brought out and tested for compatability with a 'lets make this work' attitude, prototypes are jealously guarded secrets.

When the prototypes are finally brought together, it happens at a show with a bunch of crowing marketing people with one or two under-appreciated engineers behind the curtain just in case. The engineers rarely have any authority to make changes, and management's "worst nightmare" is the thought of the lot of them getting drunk together and letting the secrets out of the bag. (That is to say, actually coming to a better understanding of what it will take to be fully interoperable).

WARNING: tasteless but accurate metaphore follows:

Inevitably, brand A won't talk to brand B. Does this convince the corperations that their engineers should get together and talk? No, it signals that the pissing contest is about to begin. Whoever covers the most floor space and pisses on the most people wins.

Once it's all over, everyone drags themselves back to their feet (still dripping), and wonders why all the potential customers went away.

End of tasteless but accurate metaphore.

You'll notice that all of the incompatabilities you mention went away at about the same time that the product became a comodity off the shelf part.

Bluetooth is at least as complex, and probably more so, than any of these technologies. The manufacturers will get this sorted out in time.

The bleeding edge is exactly that - bloody. And as they say, you can tell who the pioneers are by the arrows in their backs. Don't slag a technology when it's in its infancy, just because things aren't working perfectly yet.

I'm not slagging the technology itself, just many of the companies 'bringing us' this technology. If they were truly interested in inter-operability, they would have done something about it before embarassing themselves at a public technology show. I imagine they did extensive testing to make sure that THEIR product A talked to THEIR product B, and none to see if either product would talk to someone else's product C.

Re:This is a non-story

[lizrd]

Right now, the standard is defined, but companies are so busy madly rushing products out the door that they don't bother following the specs or doing any compatibility testing.

The problem isn't so much that people are just ignoring the spec and rushing out products that aren't fully compatable, the problem is that the spec can't be followed. The protocol spec for Bluetooth is over 1500 pages and in some places is incompatable with itself. What we have here is a perfect example of design by committee and the problems that it causes everytime it comes up. It's simply impossible to be fully compliant with the entire spec so when designing a device so you have to choose which features you're going to support and which vendors you're going to be compatable with. Right now the leading vendor seems to be Ericsson, so if you're making a Bluetooth you want to have a chance, it'd better be compatable with Ericsson radios and your other products. Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.
_____________

Cable replacement

[Russ Nelson]

The first bluebooth implementations are only going to be sold as cable replacements. So it won't really matter that J. Random combinations of bluebooth devices don't work -- because they don't work if you have a cable either.
-russ

Re:Avg Joe doesn't know

[macpeep]

I don't agree... Think about what happened to WAP. I was involved very early in making WAP stuff - even before the term WAP was announced. At first, I was very excited at the thought of being able to use "the web" over a cellular phone but after realizing what it was all about (reinventing the whe.. uh, web) but especially after seeing the poor interoperability between various handset makers' browsers, I quickly changed my view. Now, I own a phone that has a WAP browser but I've only used WAP once - to test my data connection.

Today, WAP is a complete flop. Nobody cares to do any content for it because the technology screams "proprietary". Nobody cares about using WAP because there's no content and the little content that there is will most likely not work properly with your handset.

I'm very excited about Bluetooth but at the same time I'm already worried when I hear reports like this. I've seen marketdroids talk about how "Bluetooth uses a frequency that is available in every country in the world!". The truth is that in several countries, the frequency is already used by something else. In France, for instance, it's a military frequency and it remains to be seen if Bluetooth will work reliably there at all. Microwaves and energy saving light bulbs will also cause problems for Bluetooth... From what I understand, the bandwidth is also not too great. It's enough to connect to the net to check your email and surf and it's enough to remove cables between your mouse, keyboard and computer. It's not, however, enough for wireless LAN's, printers, scanners and a shitload of other stuff. It seems like, before Bluetooth even has arrived, it's already facing a wall of problems. Not very encouraging...

They're for different things

[Rix]

802.11 is overkill for the niche Bluetooth is aimed at. You don't need a fullblown NIC in your cell phone, but it might be nice if it could communicate with your PDA.

One of IBM's Bluetooth guys spoke at VanLUG last week, and according to him IBM is aiming at 50 cents/chip for bluetooth. This will never happen with 802.11.
Cheers,

Rick Kirkland

Bluetooth over tcp/ip?

[Ace905]

When I first heard of Bluetooth, I thought to myself, "I don't really care about checking the status of my fridge while watching tv". After time however, I came to realize, "I don't really care about checking the status of my fridge while watching tv".

For those companies that are desperately seeking to make this all-american dream a reality, I have some advice;

4 layered transmissions

Layers:

1) Identify yourself uniquely, negotiate unique identities with devices conflicting with your identify. (IPv6 using your SN as a mac address, problem solved).

2) Negotiate Public Key Encryption if required -- using IEEE standard encryption algorithm located on chip mentioned at end of this rant.

3) Identify the number of variables people will be working with, ie: "I am a light. I go on or off. My variable is Boolean"; "I am a fridge, I have 3 variables. On/oFF ; Fridge Temperature (range 0 to -20) ; Freezer Temperature (range 0 to -20).

4) Identify how your interface will be displayed to the user. ie; send a pixilated ICON of your device, with the text to go underneath such as "Fridge #56". Identify Whether your variables are straight-listed, or listed in relation to each other such as a linked-tree.

If the device communicating with you has only text ability, then only text will be displayed. It is up to the individual device to decide exactly how the layout goes, so end-users can say, "I don't like the palm pilot Bluetooth interface". This is probably where the problem occurs, everyone wants their product to have scrolling advertisements and look better than someone elses. Yo, you're designing remote controls; get over yourselves.

Last requirement for Bluetooth to work: IEEE implements a Bluetooth RFC database and refuses to IEEE-BT certify non-compliant devices.

In addition to this, all devices wishing to become BlueTooth certified must have a flashable chip in the event of backwards incompatability. If you need to update your bluetooth protocol, you just broadcast the new protocol from any device to all surrounding devices.

I realize this sounds like security risk, since people could flash their own protocols with backdoors or cause major problems amongst the utilities in your house. However when you think about it logically you'll realize this really isn't such a big problem in light of the fact that your Stove, Cell Phone and Maybe even your furnace will all one day be connected to a worldwide WAN known as the internet.

I hope this dream becomes a reality soon, and I wish all you over-funded capitalist pigs luck when Z3ro-c00li0 shuts off your pilot-light and turns on your stove.

Remember when USB was Useless Serial Bus ??

[pjrc]

It took a few years for the 'U' of USB to mean something other than "Useless". It seems safe to predict that these Bluetooth compatibility issues will get worked out. Wether there really will be the golden $5 all-in-one-chip bluetooth solution remains to be seen. Until it becomes almost as cheap as the wire, it's hard to imagine it'll really get widespread adoption.