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Will 802.11 Kill Bluetooth?
joshwa writes "NYTimes (free reg. required) has an article about the struggles of the Bluetooth folks to fine-tune their technology and get the costs down far enough. The most interesting part is that analysts seem to think that 802.11's (what is this new 'Wi-Fi' moniker?) growing popularity will overshadow Bluetooth's entrance into the marketplace, and will beat Bluetooth into the small devices market. Can 802.11 actually work in a Palm or a cell phone?" The article, IMHO, misses the difference in uses - if you've got a small device that you want to conserve power on, and only communicate small distances, Bluetooth's ideal. If you've got a lot of power, a la a notebook computer, and want to communicate 150 ft., then 802.11 is what you want. Imagine that: Different uses! Different standards! Amazing!
Bluetooth was grounded before take-off. If wireless ethernet takes off, it has nothing to do with Bluetooth, one way or another.
Watch Evil Dead.
You can't kill something if it's already dead.
There are ways around it - by having APs that can handle both protocols and thus can deal with both protocols being active at once. But given teh amount of 802.11 equipment out there already, I expect many places will resist Bluetooth devices since they don't want to have to buy new APs. Thus Bluetooth will have a tough time gaining ground.
I think its a neat idea, but heck - USB was supposed to reduce the rats nest around my PC too and hasn't so far - I'm still waiting for monitors with USB ports that your keyboard and mouse connect to - I knwo they exist, but its not widely done (nor are keyboards and mice over USB)
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I work in the wireless industry myself, and can say that there is quite a bit of debate over this.
What will probably happen (as seems to happen a lot) is that one major vendor or provider will choose a certain standard, regardless of its value, or without a thought as to whether or not two technologies can be mutually compatible (as the writer above mentions). Then its time to push it down everyone's throats until the other one disappears.
Sad, but true.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Why doesn't "Big Blue" GPL some of the AIX code and incorporate it into Linux if they are so behind it? That would prove their dedication and help make Linux the platform IBM says they want it to be.
... then all you have to do is own a Handspring. There is a module to do that from Xircom (Intel)
Does somebody know if there is a 802.11 card form Palm? I've seen one for the Visor once, but I have a m100.
This space left intentionally blank.
It's too bad to see Bluetooth struggling to get out of the gates as I think the concept is right on the money. Imagine the ability to have your palm synchronize simply by entering the same room as your PC. Or your notebook to hop onto the LAN automatically when you enter your office. Or seamlessly having all the devices in your home networked without cables? A Bluetooth-enabled thermostat or burglar alarm could be configured easily from your PC without any wires. You could set your VCR to record "Seinfeld" from your desktop or (even better) from work using a browser. All without a single wire! I think there's a huge market for this type of technology, I hope Bluetooth can be rescued!
Somebody turned me onto this page that talks about how a group of guys are making a mission out of setting up localized, free wireless access to the Internet, with the ultimate goal being able to fire up your laptop anywhere within your city and get on the net for free. All it takes is a couple hundred dollars (which isnt much when shared between 20 people who pitch in, initially) and a guy who controls anything as meager as a DSL line willing to "donate" some of his bandwidth to the antenna.
If anything, stuff like this will kill Bluetooth from a purely VHS vs. Beta sort of way. When it comes down to a fight between popular acceptance versus quality of technology, popular acceptance always wins.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
ntl (UK) has just announced a trial of a wireless (10Ghz) broadband offering in London.
Detail over yonder.
Bluetooth Wireless Stumbles at the Starting Gate
By CHRIS GAITHER
ounging in bed on a recent Saturday morning, David Bolan, an executive with a Silicon Valley startup, lifted his thumb from the remote control and caught his first glimpse of his livelihood on the screen.
There, a reseller was hawking 6,000 I.B.M. (news/quote) notebook computers left over from a crashed-and-burned company. The flameout must have been recent; the machines featured a new wireless technology called Bluetooth, for which Mr. Bolan's company, Pico Communications of Cupertino, Calif., designed networking products. Although the program conveyed a grim message about the high-technology meltdown, Mr. Bolan was thrilled when the announcer proclaimed Bluetooth the coming wave of unplugged communications.
"This is awesome," Mr. Bolan, vice president for business development at Pico, recalled thinking. "The consumer is finally starting to be educated about Bluetooth."
Last year was supposed to be the breakout year for Bluetooth technology, which carries information on radio waves among mobile phones, personal computers and other devices equipped with a Bluetooth chip. A fleet of products -- from cordless phone headsets to PC adapter kits -- were to have begun their cascade into the American market.
The vision was alluring: cell phones and computers could synchronize their contact lists as soon as they were within 30 feet, hand-held computers could send documents through the air to a nearby printer, and laptops could surf the Web using a phone's cellular network. In several years, supporters argued, every electronic device or appliance -- from computers to microwave ovens -- would use a Bluetooth chip to talk automatically with other devices.
Bluetooth supporters said chips would soon cost less than $5 and run on little power, allowing device makers to build the chips into each cell phone or hand-held device without worrying about battery drain. Encouraged by some of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, analysts estimated that nearly 1.5 billion Bluetooth-ready devices would be sold by 2005, creating vast communications networks between devices and appliances.
But the cascade turned out to be a trickle -- Bluetooth was still not ready for mass production. Chip costs remained high, and devices sometimes refused to talk to each other. A handful of products began appearing on the market last September, but in small numbers and at high prices. These were normal growing pains for a young technology, but two years of boasting brought publicity to its troubles.
Industry leaders say that with a new set of technical specifications and a more stable platform, Bluetooth is finally ready to pick up speed later this year, and take off in 2002. Motorola (news/quote), Ericsson (news/quote), 3Com (news/quote), Compaq, Toshiba (news/quote) and others have early Bluetooth products, including phone and PC adapters, on the market, with plans to increase distribution later this year, and Palm will offer a Bluetooth expansion card for its m500 series of hand-helds units by the end of the year.
"We are going to drive it to become ubiquitous," said Michael Mace, chief competitive officer and vice president for product planning for Palm, which wants to enable its devices to communicate wirelessly with PC's, phones and other machines.
But while engineers fine-tune Bluetooth and major manufacturers declare its rise is imminent, troubles have emerged. First, with the souring of the economy, corporations -- usually the first to adopt new technologies -- have cut budgets. Second, sales of handhelds and cellular phones, expected to be market drivers for Bluetooth, have plunged. And last, another wireless technology, originally expected to complement Bluetooth, came in and stole much of its thunder.
The other wireless networking standard, called IEEE 802.11b, or Wi-Fi, has picked up strong momentum among information technology managers and technology savvy consumers. Wi-Fi networks allow computer users to connect to the Internet wirelessly from Starbucks (news/quote) coffee bars, as well as from some shops, airport and hotel lounges and corporate offices and college campuses.
Supporters of both technologies say there is room for both in the marketplace. But if Wi-Fi succeeds in adopting Bluetooth's most attractive attributes -- low power consumption and cost -- it could be used in a wide range of small devices, which could then use the Internet to communicate with each other. This script, some observers predict, could render Bluetooth a well-planned, heavily financed failure.
The development of Bluetooth goes back to 1994, when researchers in Ericsson's labs began work on a way to make hands-free cell phone calls without using cables. They found their solution in radio waves. Unlike infrared, which enlivens television remote controls and allows users of hand-held computers to beam their business cards to one another, radio waves can travel through walls and in many directions at once, up to about 30 feet. They used little power -- a crucial feature for devices that run on batteries. And, at least in theory, the radio chips could be made small and inexpensive, so they could be built into every phone.
In 1998, Ericsson assembled a special-interest group to begin developing this technology for the general market. The first members were the cell phone maker Nokia (news/quote), the computer manufacturers I.B.M. and Toshiba, and the chip maker Intel (news/quote). Jim Kardach, an Intel technician and amateur historian, dubbed the wireless standard "Bluetooth," after Harald Bluetooth, a Scandinavian king who unified Denmark and Norway in the 10th century. The imagery was simple: the technology would bring together devices just like King Bluetooth linked the two countries.
Joined by other technology leaders like Microsoft (news/quote), Compaq Computer (news/quote) and Lucent Technologies (news/quote), the Bluetooth Special Interest Group -- which now numbers 2,500 companies -- began suggesting that Bluetooth was the wireless technology that futurists awaited. In the beginning, they envisioned Bluetooth replacing cables to carry information not just within, but between devices, creating so-called personal-area networks unencumbered by wires.
In this Bluetooth-enabled future, proponents say, travelers will walk into airports and be instantly recognized by their devices. The airline's computer system will send, via radio waves, the passenger's boarding pass, departure gate and flight status directly to the handheld or cell phone. On the road, a car with a broken fan belt can diagnose its troubles and contact a repairman through the network.
"We're banking on the consumer marketplace to win with Bluetooth," said Francis Dance, telematics services project manager for BMW of North America.
For that to happen, Bluetooth chips need others to talk with. But the price of chip sets has not declined nearly as fast as expected. Mr. Mace, the Palm executive, said his company will begin placing a Bluetooth chip set inside every handheld when chip sets costs less than $10, about half their price today. In the meantime, Palm and other manufacturers are relying on kits that add Bluetooth to existing devices. The kits can cost $200 per device, an expensive price to eliminate cables.
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
A little know fact is that you can vary the power on 802.11 adapters/accesspoints to acheive much of the "short range" capabilities of bluetooth.
A review of the xircom 802.11 springboard module.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/0
--iamnotayam
Comparing Bluetooth to Wi-Fi is a little unfair. Bluetooth is meant to go small distances, not the ~100 feet Wi-Fi is capable of. It's better to compare Bluetooth to infrared - both are intended for short distances, and less permanent data sharing. Infrared is so rarely used that most people forget it's even there, but it would be nice if Bluetooth could change that.
Losing the wires is definately nice, but since 802.11b is more geared towards wireless networking outside of the home, it will probably saturate the market first - through stores a la Starbucks and corperations picking up the technology. Only once people see it at work/play will they buy into the technology at home. If bluetooth is cost/tech ready by that point, it will probably have its own successful coming out party .. but I definately agree .. two fundamental uses; I'd be suspicious I wasn't getting the most cost-effective solution if 802.11b was used in place of bluetooth in short-range wireless communication.
"Old man yells at systemd"
if you've got a small device that you want to conserve power on, and only communicate small distances, Bluetooth's ideal. If you've got a lot of power, a la a notebook computer, and want to communicate 150 ft., then 802.11 is what you want. Imagine that: Different uses! Different standards! Amazing!
Or 802.11 could add a low-power mode.
Lies about crimes
Whenever I speak to anyone in the IT industry, they always try and confuse me with technological terms like 802.11b and 'bluetooth'. Did consumers ask for wireless access ? Is there ANY evidence at all that this is a good thing ? What about the dangerous levels of radiation that are involved with high frequency data transmission ?
The article, IMHO, misses the difference in uses - if you've got a small device that you want to conserve power on, and only communicate small distances, Bluetooth's ideal.
This sounds like the same arguments people were using for infrared ports a few years back, and that caught on like sandpaper pantyhose.
Bluetooth devices are failing for the same reasons infrared ports don't get used: they're just not that useful. Sure, when I want to print, it's awesome to be able to hold my PDA or laptop up to an HP printer and just fire away - but I have to hold it just so to maintain connectivity.
Bluetooth is the same way - you have to be so close that it's not really useful for much other than wireless keyboards and headphones. Don't even get me started about Bluetooth connections between a cell phone and a PDA: why shouldn't I just get out the cable and save even more battery power? No sense in burning extra power just to have the convenience of leaving my cell phone in my holster.
Am I wrong? Is there anything here that infrared didn't try to solve? Is there something that you would actually pay an extra $30 to add to your small battery-operated device, something that you wouldn't just use a cable or infrared for?
What's your damage, Heather?
Actually the "802.11" that you are speaking of is really called 802.11b (yes the 'b' is important). 802.11b is the standard that most everyone thinks of when they here wireless LAN, the 11Mbps transfer rate distance of 100 or 300 meters or something like that. But there are several other 802.11 specs out there, for instance the 54Mbps standard that will make use of the 5GHz ISM band, or the 802.11a standard (I believe it is a, might be g) which is in fact a direct competetor for Bluetooth. That is it is a low power short range wireless networking system designed to link things like handhelds and whatever else. It is not that far from release and probably will over shadow Bluetooth (mostly because BT sucks, I have been doing some extensive testing and it has the stability of a MS operating system). Anyway, just a few notes, thought that I might correct the guy on the Slashdot payroll who flaps his lips about things that he is obviously not educated about.
A couple of Register stories: Psion dump Bluetooth due to lack of demand; and Microsoft knifes Bluetooth in the back. Let's hear it for good old fashioned British sarcasm, cynicism and *hey!* accurate reporting ;)
the article is actually at http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/technology/ ebusiness/20BLUE.html
funny munging
Not to blame everything on Microsoft, but The Register had a good article on this a while back. Why the press can't figure out that they're complementary standards, not competitive ones, is beyond me.
"Wi-Fi" is to Firewire
as
Bluetooth is to USB.
Hm, so what's copper and fiber Ethernet??
SCSI and Fibre Channel??
Hm....
The author of the article goes blah blah about how wireless will send his world to a new level of convenience, but will he even be able to set it up? I think this underscores the difference between the technologies, and why (with the exception that similar frequency interference problem), they will ideally work together, like firewire and USB.
funny munging
Actually wireless ethernet maybe more suited for handhelds then you may think. 11 mbps is the way almost everyone runs it by default, but nothing says you can't use 1Mbps. By reducing the data rate, and power you can probably get a very low power PDA type connection with an acceptable range. In fact I've already seen CF cards that support 802.11 (from symbol), but there are no drivers for my TRGPro yet :-(.
What will plague both of these standards though is the half arse security design. Which ever one can address enterprise level security, wide range use (PDA to desktop), and enough bandwidth for the applications used (1Mbps is probably enough for small devices, but not for heavy file sharing. So which will be the driving factor?) will probably push the other out of the market.
Bluetooth is an interesting technology. When you start looking into it, the possibilities are enormous. A lot of people were bitten by the Bluetooth bug, and it's understandable why. It would be VERY cool if it worked out.
One of the huge problems is that people keep comparing 802.11b (WI-FI) to Bluetooth.
They are NOT the same thing. Go read the Bluetooth spec. Bluetooth is a cable replacement technology that can, if necessary, do some ad-hoc networking. 802.11b is wireless Ethernet. Not the same thing, not intended to do the same thing.
There have been a couple of companies that have been deliberately muddying the waters about this. Bluetooth is NOT an acceptable replacement or even a good substitute for 802.11b. Bluetooth is limited to 1megabit per second, which means throughput of about 650k to 800k real, depending on conditions. 802.11b is 11megabits max, and about 5megabits in the real world. (Shared bandwidth, retransmissions, and Ethernet overhead)
Bluetooth is staggeringly bad at providing traditional Ethernet services, just as 802.11b is awful as a cable replacement technology. 802.11b has too much power usage, and dependency on Ethernet for cable replacement. It was NOT designed to replace the cable going from your cell phone to your headset. Bluetooth was. It was just overly hyped and generally misunderstood. Too bad, it could have been cool.
Gedvondur
After this story on EE Times, perhaps the tide will shift a bit?
"Cipher attack delivers heavy blow to WLAN security - A new report dashes any remaining illusions that 802.11-based (Wi-Fi) wireless local-area networks are in any way secure"
EE Times Article.
Hmm, the attack scales linearly with number of bits. Bummer.
Information about this exploit doesn't seem to want to be free, for example, Slashdot wouldn't announce AirSnort when it came out. We shouldn't be satisfied until we can buy a wireless ethernet card with very strong encryption. However, if people continue to buy 802.11b cards, the hardware manufacturers will have no pressure to develop a less broken protocol.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
Hopefully this isn't too oftopic - I thought it was informative enough for the current discussion...
h _s ony_handycam_dc_1.html
I just came across this on Yahoo... looks like Sony's new Handicams will have Bluetooth chips built in:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010820/tc/tec
The article, IMHO, misses the difference in uses - if you've got a small device that you want to conserve power on, and only communicate small distances, Bluetooth's ideal. If you've got a lot of power, a la a notebook computer, and want to communicate 150 ft., then 802.11 is what you want. Imagine that: Different uses! Different standards! Amazing!
I'd just like to congradulate Hemos for making a very insightful comment that prolly cut the number of useless posts in this article thread in half.
But, despite the recognized difference, I think they may have soemthing anyway. The average consumer is gonna see two protocols that appear to be redundant; they both do some sort of wireless communication, no? And, as 802.11 gets more and more popular (as it has already hit off, as opposed to bluetooth)the average consumer will see the clearly higher use of 802.11 in devices and therefore choose to go with a 802.11 device, despite the advantages that bluetooth (is supposed to) have over 802.11
But then again, maybe not.
It's been pointed out that 802.11 could have a low-power mode. 802.11 HAS a low-power mode: it's called PCF, and nobody uses it. But really, if you don't mind the power drain on the slave (the master can't sleep anyways), you can even use a low-power transmitted with DCF.
/. attitude towards Bluetooth. When MS creates proprietary standards, cool or otherwise, everyone rails on them. When Intel does it in cooperation with a couple other big names, but shuts out public participation, some people here seem to frown on the demise of the standard. While the IEEE standards process is not quite as open as the IETF, I'd take an IEEE standard over a Bluetooth SIG standard any day.
The point is Bluetooth screws up 802.11, and which is more important, your LAN that allows people to get work done when they're not in their cube, or Bluetooth which lets people talk on their cell phone using an earpiece without wires? That's a tough call, Intel.
I can't understand the
Don't believe me? Look at www.spectralink.com/products/NetLinkIP.html. This is a 802.11 based wireless phone. I recharge my battery about twice a week.
802.11 has an upgrade path. There will be higher data rates, the problems with WEP are getting slowly solved, and they are working on Quality of Service for Voice and Video devices just like this one.
Bluetooth can not keep up.
Having said that, the 802.11 silicon is getting more integrated and I don't see that there will be much difference between the two from a cost point of view.
Blue tooth may win out because of the security issue as 802.11 fades away.
Didn't we see this problem before with x2 and kflex modems? Maybe we can pray to see a ...
compromise.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
(Yes I work in the telecom/cellphone/pda industry - I've worked with Bluetooth
it's in my head
just browse on over to here to read the article.
Anyhoo, I hope that 80211 does prevail. Bluetooth just seems very flashy and pretty with out a lot of substance, while 80211 is really starting to be truly useful. (Such as in my home network, I love being able to browse while sitting on my deck!)
I posted to
It's not dead, it's pining... for the fjords...
Now that there is not one, but two publicly available WEP cracking programs Airsnort (written in C++) and WEPCrack (written in PERL), 802.11b is looking worse all the time. Given WEP's inherent insecurity, Bluetooth looks all the more attractive.
Yep, and even the NYT gets it wrong in the article. More evidence that the American press is in the entertainment business, not the information business. What a shame.
bluetooth and wi-fi should be viewed as wireless solutions for different situations.
bluetooth will succeed provided the handset manufacturers add BT to their phones. Ericsson has started this Nok and Mot are following. The key is to get a critical mass of these phones out. Given this critical mass a lot of companies will be salivating the reach them via BT. Cannot say that about Wi-Fi, wi-fi is more for private and personal use only, BT can be very easily used for push type scenarios. The usage scenarios are completely different (yes they are both about accesing data through wireless mechanisms).
I dont believe Wi-Fi will come to a PDA type device in the next couple years. BT will.
Yes.
Actually, we're better off using the same standard for different uses, wherever possible. Do you want to go back to TCP/IP, IPX, and NetBEUI on every LAN? Ethernet and token ring? They all have different uses, but they're close enough that we should just pick one pretending that it will work in all situations, then make the best of it.
Bluetooth and 802.11 are clearly in this situation, IMO. The main difference between them: one is for near and one for far. This makes sense by strict engineering standards, but in the big picture it's a detail. If 802.11 becomes the standard, we'll make it scale down to "near". Not to mention (as did another poster), what do I do if I'm "in between"? There are other parts to Bluetooth, but nothing that can't be layered on top of another network (in the Internet tradition of "dumb network, smart endpoints").
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
That's right. Not only will bluetooth be affected by the vicious 802.11x standards, there's also the attack of the microwaves. These beasts also operate in the same 2.4 GHz range, and create a lot of noise to mess up those innocent signals.
Pretty soon the hackers will realize to have a Denial of Service attack they will need lots of microwaves...lots of microwaves.
Free the mallocs.
Xircom (?) offers an 802.11 expansion for the Visor handhelds. Let's you hook straight into the network. I'd really like to see BlueTooth as well (being an alternative to the IR port), but it wouldn't fill the same gap. I personally think BlueTooth may be having some problems right now...
SIG: HUP
What can I use if I want more than that, say a range of about 20 miles? What kind of technology/speed is available? I think Spread Spectrum can not work for this, no?
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
My cordless phone drops the 802.11b connection to a bare minimum if it doesn't block it altogether. I once tried to set up a WiFi network at a customer's house and after trying several pieces of equipment, we finally figured out that it was the neighbors cordless phone causing the WLAN to go down every few minutes.
With the 802.11x security problems that have been exposed recently, I'd say that we need a new wireless standard altogether. One that is all-encompassing. Low power/bandwidth for those portables and more bandwidth for the other devices.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
He was killed by his own son over a thousand years before "Wi-Fi"
My other sig is extremely clever...
My esteemed Slashdot colleagues have already pointed out that 802.11b can have verious modes, from 1 to 11mbps. But there also is no standard for 802.11b radio output power. You can have a 100mW radio like the Cisco Aironet LCM352, or you can have a 30mW radio like the Lucent Orinoco Silver. You could have 1W or 1mW, as well. I suspect that if your range requirement is only 10 meters, you could use a 5mW radio and a short dipole antenna at 1mbps for a low-power 802.11b device. If you could get 1 or 2 dBi gain out of the antenna, you'd be doing even better.
Well, the problem isn't really 802.11 (in terms of the cordless problem) Its the fact that 802.11 uses a public band which means other stuff can use it too (and interfere with it) But if you move wireless LAns into a non public radio band, the cost goes way up as now you have to deal with the FCC and licenses. Honestly I have no idea why they even make 2.4GHz cordless phones - I mean do you REALLY need your cordless to work a mile from your home (hint - it's called cellular - get one :) ) So the bottom line is if you want inexpensive wireless gear, its gonna use a public spectrum slice and you're always going to have to deal with other devices in it.
I think folk shave been giving 802.11 a bad rap. it does a very good job. Sure WEP can be broken, but that can be fixed. I love my wireless gear and have no complaints so far! Considering you can get APs < $200 and PCMCIA cards < $99, thats pretty good! Throw in a fix for WEP and I honestly coudl care less if 802.11 kills Bluetooth :)
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
PHBs, CIOs, CTOs, and those sorts won't buy Bluetooth "less cable at the desktop" and short-range networking because it difficult to justify and not corporate-flashy. "Wireless Ethernet" sells (even if that isn't strictly what it is) because the CIOs and CTOs are familiar (they think) with the technology and can explain the advantages to the Head Suit In Charge (bring your laptop to meetings and not fumble with cat5, etc.) As with so many other things, the general-purpose standard will be adopted and will be subject to Procrustean adaptation to things it's not suited for, despite the existance of something 'better.'
AC's cheerfully ignored
*COUGH*
Have we heard of iPaq ?
And I like them,
:-)
I went to Ericsson once where they showed us a bunch of stuff working over bluetooth (vending machines, connections to pda's, laptops, internet radios, web pads and overhead beamers) and I must say I was impressed.
Interference may be an issue though but in the long run I think a technology like Bluetooth (not necesarily Bluetooth itself) will reach a large market. At some point in the future we will all probably have some fiber/DSL X megabit line into our home which is hooked up to some routing thing that sends the whole stream into the air thru some shortish range technology. From that point on we can access that broadband line from every Bluetooth enables device in our home. You don't need a high power 150' range wireless lan for that, you'd just upset the neighbourhood then.
Wireless lan may be able to do the same thing but as far as I know it's probably going to be a lot more expensive, Bluetooth and wireless lan are 2 different things (which was one of the first things I heard from the Ericsson people) with different uses. The Bluetooth organisation thingy whatever comittee or something wants to get the price of a chip under $5 so practically every manufacturer will throw in bluetooth, if only as a marketing thing. I don't see that happening with wireless lan.
Besides all that LAN's Ethernet, AFAIK, and Bluetooth makes individual connections to different devices on different frequencies, again AFAIK. Bluetooth just seems a lot more efficient to hook up devices that don't need a gazillion bits to operate at an acceptable level.
Ok, I'll stop ranting now, it's the end of the working day and I can't say I'm feeling very coherent
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
heck - USB was supposed to reduce the rats nest around my PC too and hasn't so far
Ummm, no it wasn't! How exactly would USB reduce the rats nest (i.e. lots of wires) around your PC, when it, too, uses wires?
USB was designed to provide faster data throughput than serial/parallel cables, hot-plug&play, and the ability to use a huge # of devices... all for a relatively low cost.
It was NOT designed to reduce the # of wires around your computer system. That's what Bluetooth is for.
"And like that
About the speed of 802.11b... I just read a review of 10 or so access points and card combos. They had Cisco's Aironet at 4.8 Mbps. Most of the others were in the 2.5 - 4.0 range. This is fine for web or generic work, but it just won't fly in the corporate world.
Most of the consulting I have done in evaluating wireless LAN products has led to the conclusion that it is only good for laptops, and only light to moderate use at that. Most coders or DBAs won't touch it if they can't get 100 Mbps.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
except 802 is more expensive, and has longer range. Why don't you convince me CD-R/CD-RW and zip drive are not the same thing. Go ahead, go! by the time bluetooth work out its bug, 802.11 will be so cheap it won't matter anymore. I'm a student and i have a cisco card for godsake. DOn't be a cheap bastard and root for the cheap bluetooth.
(The whole idea of bluetooth constructs on a pressimistic premise, that the technology won't advance fast enough to bring down the cost of 802.11 and bring up the battery life. People don't like pressmistic visions, even though its ture)
-tino
Here is an article on Yahoo about Sony Handycam's
using Bluetooth to make them "networkable" for sharing media.
Is it just me or does Sony seem to support a lot of varied technologies? Seems it would make them less disaster-prone to debacles involving putting all of their technological "eggs" in one proverbial basket. It kind of makes sense when you have Sony's financial backing to be on every bandwagon that comes through town.
They were foremost in the mini-disk market (which sadly didn't make it because I bought one
Just a thought.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
This is easy to fix. Simply change the channel that your wireless HUB is on and the devices will find it. I find that that channels 2, 6 and 10 tend to be the ones most free of trouble from 2.4Ghz phones. The default channel (11) on many wireless hubs is just an awful choice.
--- I do not moderate.
'Wi-Fi' = Wireless Firewire - recognizes the similarities between 802.11b and FireWire in that both are higher bandwidth, easily pluggable channels for communication between devices. 802.11b happens to also be wireless, hence 'Wi-Fi'.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
802.15 and 802.11 have very different purposes. 802.11 is designed from the ground up to be "wireless ethernet" while 802.15 is really a replacement for IR ports and for wire replacement. For instance, 802.15 has an SDP, a Service Discovery Protocol, which is basically a way do discover what the other bluetooth devices in your piconet can do. The original idea was for you to press the "Print" button and your bluetooth device goes out and asks who can handle something called a "print job". The local BT enabled printer pipes up and they negotiate automatically (The 802.15 spec also has provisions for authentication and encryption), and your print job automagically appears on the printer. To do this with 802.11, you would have to make some sort of Service Discovery layer on top of the 802.11 standard, and most 802.11 devices wouldn't support it. Bluetooth devices also draw much less power than 802.11 devices in general, and the 802.15 spec even has provisions for cutting down on your tx power if you are close enough to the piconet master (although I don't think most devices implement this yet).
In a nutshell this article is the equivlent of saying that Ethernet is going to kill off USB, because it's obviously so much faster and stuff.
I read the internet for the articles.
I'm typing this on my g3 keyboard w apple pro mose on my windows laptop's dock setup.
Can you ever find a win keybord even close to the beauty of themac keyboard. No. This is actually a fact, cause i have looked up and down the ebay.
YES, the apple key IS the windows key! The power off button is the "stanby" key. Only keys missing are the menu ky and the delete key. You can emulate them with hotkey or other software.
-tino
"...if you've got a small device that you want to conserve power on, and only communicate small distances, Bluetooth's ideal. If you've got a lot of power, a la a notebook computer, and want to communicate 150 ft., then 802.11 is what you want. "
These aren't "different uses". Different uses would be something like "walking the dog" vs "picking my teeth" or "flying the space shuttle" vs "trimming the hedges". Both of *your* examples are "using a portable computer to communicate wirelessly".
I mean, consider this. You go to Circuit City and ask to buy some speakers. The guy there says "Well, for DVDs or for VHS?" Ummmm....does it matter? "Of course. They are totally different technologies. One uses magnetic tape while the other is an optical disk technology. Totally incompatible. Don't even try playing VHS tape sound through DVD-compatible speakers."
Obviously different devices have different *optimal* solutions. But keep in mind that no device exists in a vacuum. If laptops are running 802.11 then handhelds better do the same or I simply won't buy one. It's not like the two camps having nothing to say to each other and can be fully partitioned.
324006
In fact, given 802's security problems with weak encryption, it's likely to be replaced in a few years with something stronger. Which doesn't mean that free bootleg connections and a semi-anonymous, always-on world aren't coming anyway.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Remember those "friendly" aliens from Mars in "Mars Attacks"? Swap in Bill Gates for each alien and then think about what's the fuss about Bluetooth....
The problem is this: Microsoft is dis'ing Bluetooth and pushing 802.11 for all the wrong reasons. 802.11 is a good technology but it forces the small device( ie Palms ) to be bigger. WinCE devices are already FAT because the OS and the plethora of capabilities pre-packaged. This is why Microsoft is pushing 802.11 over Bluetooth. It takes care of two big headaches it has.....Palm based handhelds are becoming the place were users keep their data and the computer/network is a backup or copy of the PDA. This isn't what Microsoft wants because it wants to own your data and charge you to access it. By pushing for the death of Bluetooth it stalls Palms move into wireless, leaves Palm handhelds stranded by requiring it be "tethered" to a computer they can keep track of, and gets another shot at moving your data into it's hands instead of yours.
Another technology attacked to preserve the almighty Microsoft corporation.....
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
IMHO, the real reason why bluetooth won't make it is this: I saw an ad: "Bluetooth protocol stack in only 27k of code memory!!!!"
I'd want bluetooth connectivity on my PIC from microchip. These come with 1k up to something like 4k of program memory. You can do (probably a bit limited) tcp/ip in them (Search slashdot for the smallest web server, and you'll find a couple of references), but if the bluetooth protocol stack requires 27k of code, that will never fit. And TCP/IP lends itself to implementing part. I expect the bluetooth protocol not to be so lenient.
Anyway, a cheap coffeemachine costs $20, You'd want one with connectivity for say $40, and that would mean you can spend $5 for the PIC from Microchip, but not much more. A microcontroller with a separate ROM is already going to be much too expensive.
Roger.
Sounds like your dream box is already here.
Take your pick, iMac or G4 Tower.
iMac - one power, one Ethernet (or you can go Airport and eliminate that) and a single USB cable for the keyboard and mouse.
G4 has that sweet USB/Display/Display power cable from the CPU to the display, Ethernet (or you can go wireless here too) and power. Keyboard and mouse are on the single USB cable.
My girlfriend's iMac DV setup sounds just like your dream box and desk. Me, I have an old G3 tower with a rat's nest of cables...can anyone tell me why cables will always get tangled?
802.11b has probably become too cheap for Bluetooth to take hold. There's no justification for it unless it's a lot cheaper.
Personally, I'd stick with firewire for DV.
Wasn't there supposed to be a wireless firewire
standard soon?
There were just too many threads I wanted to reply to, so I figured I'd just put everything I had to say in one post, so here goes:
1. The statement that Bluetooth is lower power than 802.11 is currently false. Okay, it has a lower power transmitter, yes, but so far, last I knew, nobody had produced a Bluetooth radio that wasn't at least as much of a power hog as an 802.11 radio... and any 802.11 radio that has a power-saving mode does _much_ better than a Bluetooth radio. Bluetooth was also supposed to be cheaper, but the manufacturers are discovering that they are having a tough time bringing down the cost on that, too. Given time, these problems can be overcome, however, 802.11 happens to have a large headstart on both the cost and power fronts, and therefore has a good chance of preventing Bluetooth from being able to compete (nobody wants to invest a bunch of resources into a standard that the market hasn't yet truly clamored for).
2. Bluetooth and 802.11b interoperability. Without breaking one standard or the other, it ain't going to happen. And even if you do break one standard, it won't be backwards compatible. The two standards conflict too much. 802.11b has a back-off mechanism. Bluetooth doesn't. I actually did some work looking into building a Bluetooth/802.11b AP that would try to cleanly give both Bluetooth and 802.11b time on the air without breaking either standard. It's too difficult. Bluetooth is just to strict on the timing (not to mention the big problem that some Bluetooth cards refuse to give up being the Master).
3. 802.11 security was not broken. WEP was broken. Badly. But WEP is not the end-all, be-all of security. And yes, the industry _is_ working on better security, and has been for some time. IEEE 802.11 Task Group e is still in the process of agreeing upon a method for point-to-point security, with dynamically session keys, including a username/password setup. This is what the industry has wanted for some time. WEP was only meant to slow down the script kiddies who would just sit in parking lots with their cards set to associate to "ANY". I really wish people would stop assuming that WEP is the entirety of wireless security. It is not, and was never intended to be. One more note on this: it was not 802.11x that was broken. I'm not sure what 802.11x is, but it isn't a security standard. 802.1x is a LAN security standard, but even that isn't what was broken. Just WEP.
4. 802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11. 802.11 is the general IEEE group for Wireless LAN networking. 802.11b is the 11Mbps standard. 802.11a is the 5GHz 54Mbps standard (once they decide exactly what that standard is). TGe, which should translate to 802.11e will be the new security standard. There are others (including a standard for 22Mbps in the 2.4GHz band, which I _think_ is 802.11h), but I don't remember what most of them are.
5. Wi-Fi stands for "Wireless Fidelity". Basically, a bunch of 802.11 card manufacturers got tired of the fact that different cards that implemented IEEE 802.11 were not interoperable. So WECA was born (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance). WECA decided that "IEEE 802.11" wasn't a marketing-friendly name, so they came up with "Wireless Fidelity" or "Wi-Fi" for short. Despite the marketing speak, this is actually a good organization. They have a whole slew of tests to determine whether an 802.11 radio is compatible with others that have passed the tests. If they pass, they get to put the Wi-Fi logo on their product. If a product has the Wi-Fi logo, then it can interoperate with any other radio that has passed the WECA tests. So there is a very minor distinction between Wi-Fi and 802.11. Basically, it is possible for a radio to implement 802.11 and not be Wi-Fi, but at this point, no company in their right mind would do so.
Well, that pretty much ends my rant. Take it for what you will.
-Freeptop
For a better article on factors driving the relative failure of bluetooth and sucess of 802.11b, read Bye-bye, Bluetooth by Bill Gurley (of Benchmark and Above The Crowd fame) courtesy news.com.
While I think Gurley makes some good points about the relative cost economies (Bluetooth doesn't seem to have an advantage) and the power of server connected applications versus localized networks, I wouldn't dismiss local device networking so fast. There's a lot of potential for cell phone to fixed point communication, cell/laptop transfer, vehicle networking, etc. that passive RF can't handle. For all of its good points, 802.11b is very difficult to get broad coverage with and GPRS/2.5G cellular technology is probably more economical if the cellular providers could ever come up with a good data pricing model.
Regards, RJS
The article is about a year out of date... 802.11b has basically won over HomeRF, and is likely to dent Bluetooth's popularity a lot. Personally, I think they both have their place, but Bluetooth will have to address its interference with 802.11b if it is not to be banned from the Wi-Fi workplace and avoided in Wi-Fi homes.
Microsoft won't support Bluetooth in upcoming WinXP. And WILL support 802.11 at unprecedented level. Bluetooth comitee did a poor job on standartisation, that's why Bluetooth devices are not functional now. Bluetooth standard leaves too much freedom for device developer. With this standard at its present state it is very hard to create a bluetooth device which is capable to "talk" to other bluetooth devices.
Check out my 802.11 pix here! This was from the roof of a building in down town norfolk virginia. 802.11 rocks!
This is the single largest reason that 802.11b will end up being a dead-end product from an
extensable infrastructure point of view.
If you look very, *very* carefully at 802.11b design, everything about it screams inadequate engineering. I espically get a kick out of all the "Wireless ISP" who are deploying the gear (oh, yeah, that's smart... bet your *entire* business plan on unprotected frequency space). It doesn't take a rocket-scientist to look at the three co-located access point limitation to realize that you can't even solve the map coloring problem (a standard cellular deployment/freq. propagation exercise) for the single vendor instance, let alone multiple vendors. And, hey, if you don't believe me, drop on by the NZNOG mailing list, where you would have found the following recent contribution:
> From: "Neil"
> Subject: CLEAR Net Tempest
> To:
>
> Hi All,
>
> Has anyone else had any problems with Clear's 802.11 wireless
> internet service (http://www.clear.net.nz/services/tempest.html) as
> a source of interference? They have just done a rollout in Rotorua
> and totally stoped 3 separate wireless networks that had been running
> together nicely for the past year or two.
>
> [...]
I won't even bother going into the inadequate engineering effort that was expended during the design of WEP. That's pretty much a dead horse anyway.
But beyond all this, the access point/slave node model, that the majority of 802.11b implementations use, is fundamentally non-extensiable. Lucent had some interesting peer-to-peer firmware releases, but I'm not even sure you can get them (even if you're willing to pay) these days. I also liked Rooftop systems, which seemed to have the most mature wireless architecture (too bad Nokia brought them out and basically killed the product). Another of my favorates is Breezecom, although I don't like the way they advertize the bandwidth (3mbps my ass), but some of their FHSS synchronization (unusable in the good old USA) make up for their marketing.
Bluetooth is cool because is basically fscks up 802.11b's day without becoming completely unusable (for non-time sensitive data) in and of itself. I can't wait until users start boosting their Bluetooth signals with ranger extending antenna and small amps. I'm also pissed with the freq. allocations; I'm tired of line-of-sight in a big way. Why the IEEE802.11 track didn't go down the high-bandwidth FHSS road is completely beyond me. Bascially, it's going to end up going down that road anyway, with the arrival of complete bastardization of 802.11b like the "Harmony" firmware relase for a certain brands of access points and slave cards. But, until I can buy a a set of Bluetooth legacy plugs for ethernet (two smallish pigtails that plug into eithernet sockets and get rid of the wire via layer 2 bridging... and hopefully with some client and switch end configurable filtering), I won't be a happy camper. Anyway, the easiest solution from the Bluetooth spectrum is just to side step the issue by building Bluetooth chips that can work on 900mhz, 2.4ghz and 5ghz freqs all at the same time. Of course, by the time you do that, you're not going to get the Bluetooth chip(s) to fit in a pen.
Until re-configurable wide-band wireless data tranceivers arrive, I'm afraid we're all stuck playing the stupid "which least fit, poorly engineered standard will gain the most market share and wipe out better alternatives" game. And at the moment, 802.11b is it with regard to data (and oddly enough, bluetooth is probably going to be the standard for the pseudo-analog signal... and by that I mean audio primarily... which is where you will see bluetooth being the most activly used... all you dumb-asses with Ericsson headsets can now look foolish for setting on an non-steero solution... too bad you're going to have to re-invest in Bluetooth once the first MP3 Bluetooth audio mixer comes on the market... and hey you marketing b*tches, where's my Bluetooth 1/4" audio jack plug powered with a watch battery to take care of all my "legacy audio" needs?)
It is possible to secure an 802.11b network, just get somebody competent to wrap an IPSEC VPN arround it.
I am just scanning through the Bluetooth documents, I do not see the tern 'AES' or 'RC4' or any other cipher I am familiar with in the acronyms, I do see the acronym LFSR however. Looks to me like they are using a Linear feedback shift register. If so my guess is that it will be lucky to survive three months of serious analysis.
I don't see the type of security architecture in Bluetooth that would be needed to support their applications securely. The 'Security Architecture' document appears to be one long explanation of why they are not providing any.
People should not take the lack of exploits of Bluetooth to indicate that it must be secure. People only started to look at 802.11b security after the devices went on sale branded 'secure'. If somebody wants my input at the design stage they have to pay me for it. If I am going to work for free I want to at least get publicity in return. Breaking a prototype specification does not create publcity and generate consulting gigs.
I don't buy the argument that Bluetooth is designed to serve a different market to 802.11b. A general purpose LAN will serve any general purpose, end of story.
The best idea the Bluetooth types have come up with for a killer application to date is allowing my laptop to talk to my cell phone. If I want my laptop making G3 wireless data calls I will get it a PCMCIA card to do just that. I don't want to buy a $300 bluetooth card and a new $500 cell phone. In Europe the standard cellphone contracts now allow multiple phones per household by default. That pricing model will apear in the US if G3 or GPRS are to take off.
If my wireless keyboard or mouse offendeth my 802.11b network I will cut them off.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I love reading about Bluetooth! Some of the examples I've read:
"You walk into an airport, and they beam your ticket to your cell phone or PDA." I've seen the airlines lose my luggage before; I think they'll find a way to screw up beaming me my ticket. Anyway, this would require some sort of encryption because they'd want to know if my luggage has been with me, am I the person who really owns this PDA, etc. No, I suspect that Bluetooth will really result in me getting 3 ads for airport gift shops sent to my PDA when I walk in the door.
"You walk in your house and your Palm automatically synchronizes" Sounds great. My Palm confuses my contact manager too often -- duplicate names, to-do's not checked, meetings duplicated. I do want my PDA doing anything without my permission first.
No, I expect Bluetooth will revolutionalize our lives the way infrared in PDAs revolutionalized how we exchange business cards. And *nobody* has printed business cards anymore, right? I work in the telecom industry, and I've seen someone beam a business card maybe 3 times in the last 4 years of the PDA-revolution.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
You can buy a Palm device with 802.11 or 802.11b from Symbol These units have built in 2D scanners as well. These are excellent for data collection on warehouse floors.
A belt pouch is available as well, as the symbol version is much longer than the Palm version(to house the 802.11(b) card and scanner)
I have worked with these using Wavelink software and Telnet software. They are easy to use and seem to work every time. The only draw back is some times you do not want a warehouse floor guy to be playing games when he should be checking inventory or packing
If you need professional wireless integration try Best Way Technologies
.More of my thoughts
I am not surprised to hear this at all. Bluetooth technology has been marketed to consumers terribly. No one knows what Bluetooth is, where it came from or what benifits it has. The new 802.11b standard is showing up all over the place and will probably end up replacing bluetooth despite its security and technological flaws.
Hopefully these two technologies can coexist as many other writers here have said. But I believe stronlgy in BT.
It's a european technology that will get heavily pushed by Cellphones and the UMTS phone system, atleast here in Europe were the advance is a bit ahead of the US.
The US however really likes to use US technologies even though better alternatives exist (compare todays telephone networks). Luckily it seems that with Vodaphone UMTS will be the choice even in the US and this will most surely bring with it BT.
As far as 802.11 is concerned I think that it will need to fix some security issues before it will be mainstream, atleast here in Sweden.
Real programmers never comment their code. If it's hard to write, it should be hard to read!
Remeber, firewire and usb were also supposed to complement each other. usb was for low-power, low-bandwith, dumb devices like mice and keyboards while firewire was for high-bandwidth, smarter devices like hard drives, a/v equipment, and even other computers. Intel at one point even promised to include firewire support in one of their chipsets a while back.
Where are we now? usb hard drives, cd burners, network adaptors, and a new backward-compatible, high-bandwith version on the horizon. firewire comes standard on vaios and macs and not much else. usb is ubiquitous while firewire has become an niche technology.
Bluetooth and 802.11 may be too close to coexist peacefully. I know nothing about the technologies here, but what's to stop the 802.11 people from making a low-power version?
Read it in last month's print version; here it is online:
t ml
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0801issue/0801scicit4.h
One would think if your microwave oven is leaking so much in the 2.4 ghz spectrum, to be causing your network to fail, you may have more serious problems :-o Like cooking your coworkers :)
:D
:-o
Check the seals on your oven!
I heard one women on slashdot say that her oven actually works with the door open
They are both wireless.. but comparing BlueTooth to 802.11b (PLEASE QUIT calling it 802.11, it's 802.11b, a small PART of 802.11. 802.11 encompases wired ethernet as well) is like comparing satellite transmission gear to your radio controlled model car. They just have nothing to do with each other, other than both use rf. Or to put it in other terms, it's like comparing Apples and Oranges.
If 802.11b succeeds (it already is) it will have nothing to do with how well Bluetooth does, and vice versa. Once again, to refresh, the point of bluetooth is this:
A low-cost all-inclusive chipset (1 or 2 chips) that can be added to any device to bluetooth-enable it. YES it's short range, low power. It was *designed* that way; it's not a shortcoming.
The whole idea was that, rather than have every company design proprietary wireless systems, they should all get together, develop a low-cost spec, and let the new market that's created work for itself.
of COURSE a palm *could* use 802.11b.... but it takes more power, and is overkill. Confuscious say 'Don't use a cannon to kill a mosquito'
Bluetooth and 802.11 can't be compared. 802.11 is meant to replace ethernet. Bluetooth is meant to replace IR, serial cables, USB, etc.
Rather like USB vs. FireWire, eh?
Tho' it's nice to see than Intel has finally seen the light WRT IEEE 1394, rather than trying to shove USB2 down developers' throats for applications that 1394 is much more suited.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
...the real problem was that it was a great idea without a market. Basically, the folks doing the market research didn't do their jobs right, or like the analysts in the dot-com craze of the past couple of years, led themselves to believe that the old rules didn't apply.
The real problem is that Bluetooth has a range of only about 10m. In one famous example, an expo was supposed to have wired an entire building with Bluetooth. They put the access points in the ceiling. The problem was, the ceiling was over 10m high! So it was a bust.
The criticism of the article that the two products have different uses makes sense, because Bluetooth isn't being "beaten" by 802.11. 802.11 has an actual use, a market, and products people want to buy. If Bluetooth dies, it'll be because it died on its own, without help or hindrance from 802.11.
Examples abound:
NT over Novell (and Banyan Vines)
Ethernet over Token-Ring
Fast Ethernet over FDDI/ATM
PCs over mini-computers, dumb terminals, mainframes
Display some adaptability.
Seeing as how Norway and Denmark are currently separate, we can add that Bluetooth also works just as well as its namesake.
Bluetooth's use was intended for inter-device communication at short range.
802.11 is for full-blown wireless networking.
Bluetooth is good for proximity-based services (neat things like flipping from free long-distance for authorized people when using a company phone, or how about a car door that unlocks as you approach?)
I thought the big difference between 802.11 and Bluetooth was that Bluetooth works without wireless access point and does device discovery.
Any comment on that?
No need to read the comments today. I have concisely summarized the multitude of redundant, lengthy, and unusually arrogant responses into a number of categories designed for rapid assimilation:
Move along people, nothing to see here...
This is the way I see it...
What do people own now? Laptops and Cellphones
What is bluetooth for? neither of these.
Why is everyone using 802.11b? Because everyone owns laptops.
A few things need to happen before the bluetooth revolution can even begin, and none of those things have happened. First, internet-ready cellphones need to add Bluetooth. There is no guarentee this will happen but I think it will because Bluetooth is MUCH lower power than 802.11b and cellphone companies probably won't mind slapping on a marginal ammount of power usage.
Once cellphones have it, everyone will want to put it in every device, and why? Because it will be cheap, and it will be low power. Stick it in a car, stick it in a mini-cellphone that connects to the transmitter in your pocker, stick it in a Palm or PocketPC to go through your cell for internet browsing...Right now an iPaq with 802.11 lasts about an hour...and the range really isn't that great...let the cellphone people deal with the big signal, and let everyone else come through them...
I think bluetooth just isn't ready...but its coming...
Your signatures belong to me.
Of course it will. Higher speed(802.11a), longer distance, better interoperability, here today rather than bluetooth's maybe tomorrow.
Bluetooth was dead before it got off the drwingboard, some people just don't like to accept reality.
I currently synchronize my Newton with my home machines (One CHRP machine running Copland OS with OpenDOC as middleware, the other running MS Bob) , all connected by Bluetooth devices. The best part is that the monitor on my machines are all those new VisuaLABS tiled displays.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
This story is based on a new study by Evans Data and it seems to pretty much refute this article. Not to mention the fact that Bluetooth is meant for cable replacement, not wireless lan. It just so happens that bluetooth can do lan too. For all that is good and holy stop comparing Bluetooth and 802.11. This is no comparison. Stop it. Really. It just doesn't make any damn sense.
Do you live in the real world?
I know of many companies that use 802.11 for real world telecomm needs. For one thing, I do. I use it for my current backbone link. It saves me about $10,000 a month on the cost of leased lines. Two antennas, some cable, and two APs, and bam, instant highspeed link.
This stuff works in the real world.
Another example is the wireless ISP. There are a few hundred of them around. They provide connections in the burstable-to-1500kBps range, and are generally quite affordable (~$40-50 a month). Very reliable, too.
http://gabrielcain.com/
I don't want bluetooth as a wireless standard for talking between computers, but I would love to have it for having minor accessories talk to a central hub computer, such as the Anoto pen. What with all this talk about 802.11b being so unsecure, there should be room for another standard in the mix.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I just don't see how people don't get it. You haven't paid the least attention to the case I originally gave ... the encrypted (possibly) cell phone does the communications ... the heck with blue tooth all over the place. You're one of those who tries to treat bluetooth and wireless lan the same. If you don't understand the purpose of the technology, then try to learn about it. And this is at a fraction the cost and many times the reliability of your idea of bluetooth and camera coverage all over a city (which is likely an impossible task in any case).
What I'm talking about works reliably and inexpensively in every trial where there's been an understanding of the keyword 'LOCATION'.
there's another alternative for short range wireless
:)
this is the specs page on their site:
http://www.spike-wireless.com/specs.html
but basically, it's low latency, low power, much cheaper than bluetooth.. i think around 5-6$ per chip now, which includes a 50 mhz MIPS chip, of which you can use about 50% of the cycles for any application, so you could have a PDA built around this.
the company that developed it is http://www.eleveneng.com/
i see this as the short range solution for pda's cellphones, mp3 players, and gaming, and WiFi for long range stuff..
RIP bluetooth
Everybody talks about datarate, power, size and cost as the major differences between these standards (IEEE 802.11b and 802.15.1 aka Bluetooth), however no-one has mentioned the major differences between these technologies which is device density. These other parameters will change, today Bluetooth is lower cost, lower power, smaller size, but IEEE 802.15 is working on 20 Mbps versions and the Bluetooth SIG is working on 6-10 Mbps versions of Bluetooth. At the same time various 802.11 working groups are working on even higher datarate versions of 802.11, and it will eventually come down in power, cost and size.
...).
802.11 was designed to replace a LAN, which provide good user capacity in a shared data medium. Bluetooth was designed to replace a cable, which is primarily a non-shared data medium.
Let me give an example. Lets define a device that consume 100 Kbps between two devices (think of a DivX player and portable headset to watch movies, same calculations could be done at 300 Kbps for a higher quality movie). As a basis, we'll compare an area of 100 meter radius (the typical coverage of an 802.11b network). Lets calculate how many of these devices (actually device pairs) could co-exist within this 100 meter area, all playing a movie which streams at 100 Kbps. Note this is a cable replacement example, data goes from the player to headset.
For Bluetooth each pnet would cover 10 meters and would consume 100 Kbps (which isn't a problem as each pnet has a 720 Kbps capacity, so you are using about a 1/7th of the capacity). Lets assume that we pack 30 co-located pnets within this 10 meter area, simulations will show that all pnets within that are will now only see a 80% throughput (576 Kbps/pnet, so this application still only consumes 1/5th the data capacity of a single Bluetooth pnet). 100 ten meter bubbles can fit within a 100 meter radius, giving a total of 30*100 device pairs (3000 players, and 3000 headsets) within this 100 meter area. This gives a total "aggregate" datarate of 3000*100Kbps, or 292 Mbps within that 100 meter area! Note that Bluetooth provides an aggrigate possible data rate in this area of 3000*576Kbps, or 1.65 Gbps!
802.11b doesn't do so well with co-located nets (direct sequence wasn't designed for this, note Bluetooth is a frequency hopper). However 802.11b has three non-overlapping channels that can provide full throughput (lets assume the max throughput is about 6 Mbps per network, though you never see this). This means the aggregate bandwidth in the 100 meter area is 18 Mbps, or 18 Mbps/100 kbps gives roughly 184 devices in this area. However the 802.11b is at FULL CAPACITY, it has no more bandwidth. Note I could add more networks, however its not practical and the interference starts reducing the throughput dramatically (this is about as good as it would get). Additionally a practical limit is 2 networks in a 100 meter area (overlapping the non-overlapping channels, e.g. 1, 6, 11, 1, 6, 11,
So, in a 100 meter area, we show a bunch of Bluetooth pnets supporting over 3000 of these devices while still having 4/5 of its network capacity idle. In the same 100 meter area the 802.11b network will support about 180 devices with the network maxed out.
Taking Bluetooth to its full network capacity (100m radius), Bluetooth would support roughly 21,000 such devices (560Kbps*3000devices/100Kbps).
This is the big difference between these technologies: "Device density".
The weakness of Bluetooth has to do with it supporting a shared data model. On any given pnet supporting more than 8 devices reduces throughput dramatically (the 9th device will drop throughput by 10% or more, each device making it worse). This is because of the overhead in swapping the radio from an Active Member Address (AMA) to a Passive Member Address (PMA). However Bluetooth makes a wonderful WLAN for less than 8 devices (data rates plan to go over 20 Mbps!).
802.11 uses a CSMA-CA protocol that allows it to scale with lots (100s) of users. A single access point will support 100s of users in a large (100m radius) area. This and its high datarate are its strengths.
Yeah, because you really just can't run bandwidth intensive applications like vi with only 5 to 10 Mbits/sec.
It will basically replace IrDA. Period. IMHO, comparing it with 802.11 is apples and oranges.
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
Ever seen an iPAQ 802.11b CF or case? It is big too and I think Microsoft is backing that effort.
Pedantic correction (the best kind of correction). 802.11 is Ethernet. RJ45/Cat 5 is wired Ethernet. Ethernet is a wireless standard.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
w00p
Let me clarify 'most coders'. I mean the the ones that run visual development tools on windows. In case someone forgot that they are the majority. :ob
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
I just realized this when I woke up this morning (long time after this post). Not sure what I was thinking.. sorry for the bad info.
Not sure why I thought 802.11 included wired sttuff... I was getting mixed up with 802.3 and 802 in general.