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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!
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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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
I would love to buy this module.
No you wouldn't.
I have both an Apple Airport base-station and a Handspring Visor.
So do I...
Why I won't buy it: $299 + tax + shipping.
Why you SHOULDN'T buy it:
It's not WiFi compliant, which means IT DOESN'T WORK WITH AIRPORT. It will only work with the Xircom access point. (Standards? What standards?)
But wait! It gets better! After biting my tongue on many bad words and buying the @#($&@!! Xircom Special Super Secret 802.11 Version access point, you know what we found? There's a bug in the Ethernet->PPP translation layer THAT THROTTLES THE CONNECTION TO SERIAL SPEED. Palm acknowledges it but has no plans to fix it.
As a matter of fact, names removed to protect the guilty, here's what Palm had to say about it EXACTLY:
...I'm not sure you're gonna get a super-high bandwidth connection on today's PalmOS. Maybe the symbol device would be good--I think that they take the PPP overhead out, since I think they have a real ethernet driver...
So, at this moment, the Quest For Handheld Bandwidth here is hoping that the new Xircom m505 cradle, which IS alleged to be WiFi compliant, will magically give us a video strength connection without changing anything.
If not, well, off to worship at the altar of the Beast from Red Mound we go, I suppose. An @migo PD-600C is on its way here too...
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.