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HP Introduces A Bluetooth Printer
man_ls writes: "I found this on C|Net, it's an HP Printer that also supports Bluetooth. You can read about it here. Not that the Bluetooth will do anything except interfere with 802.11 wireless networks, but it's an interesting feature to have." Actually, Bluetooth shouldn't interfere with 802.11 except in confusing product marketing, right? Nice to see that at least one printer will actually hit the market with a short-range radio interface instead of wire (inconvenient) or IR (poor interoperability).
IR seems like a much better choice than Bluetooth in many applications because it is intrinsically more secure and doesn't suffer from RF interference. The latest IrDA standards are also a lot faster than Bluetooth. Visibility and propagation restrictions for IR are usually not all that serious in an office environment.
There are a few niche applications where Bluetooth may be better, but I'd like to see IrDA used much more widely. Too bad that IrDA has lost its buzz.
Alot of people are wondering what the point of this, talking about carrying the printer around, etc. The point of IR and / or Bluetooth on a printer, is now anyone can walk into the office with his laptop/pda/cell/whatever, and print instantly. No need to dock it, hook up a cable, install drivers (cause they'd already be instealled), etc. This is a godsend for people who do most of their work on the road. This is the reason printers have been IR compatable for some time.
What's wrong with a standard, ethernet-connected postscript printer? Can't they just throw a 802.11 network card at it?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
From the article, "While we haven't had a chance to test the DeskJet 995C, ..."
Ummm, this may as well be an HP press release.
Bluetooth does interfere with 802.11- they are both using the same 2.4 GHz band (as a bunch of other things too) but they do interfere- they don't completely knock each other out, but they will degrade each other's range and total throughput. I wish I had a good reference for it- my information comes from a talk I heard from a guy on the Bluetooth committee. That 2.4 GHz band is a free-for-all. Telephones, Bluetooth, 802.11, wireless cameras, and whatever the next big thing is. You only have so much bandwidth, and you have to share.
As a cable to something like a printer- yep, that's the whole idea behind bluetooth- as a way to eliminate wires, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of it. Eliminating wires is just the beginning- the real amazing stuff will come when things are truly interconnected and it's cheap- cheap really is the selling point behind bluetooth. The manufacturers I've talked to have a goal of about a $5.00 cost for the bluetooth solution. When we get there (802.11 is a more complex solution that is aimed for the higher end, and that is getting pretty cheap- the cards are way under $100, which means that the chipsets are probably under $20). Aside from the irritating marketing potential, having everthing interconnected is the way things are going- where you don't have to worry about synchronizing your Palm Pilot and your phone with your computer, they do it automatically when you're nearby.
Bluetooth has the potential to really change the way computers work with everything- we just have to see if it will really happen. It's not the only thing that we need- and it won't happen tomorrow.
Hell, what's wrong with pen and paper? ;-)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I think the point is if you have a postscript printer on your IP network, and you hook up an 802.11 access point t your IP network, then your printer magically becomes an 802.11 printer as well (unless you fire wall off the 802.11 part, which is frequently a good idea, but not as frequently done).
The upside? One 802.11 access point gets all your printers. The downside? The longer range of 802.11 lets people outside your office waste your paper. Plus IP stacks on many printers are insanely fragile, so someone could break the printer pretty simply.
Anyway, I have my printer hooked up to my 'puter via direct satellite link, so there.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
So the obvious question is if there are other similar problems possible/probable with all these other wireless devices.
Of course, technically, it is possible, but I am wondering about the practical worries, be it from the office next door or whatever, given the coming explosion in the range of wireless devices.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This is starting to get somewhat offtopic, but
I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).
I tried to mix the two when creating a 'set-top box' type computer system for TV use -- mostly to play MAME games and such on the big screen, but I added an 802.11 card and cordless key/mouse for some comfy web surfing.
At any rate, I had tons of connection problems with from the 802.11 in this machine to the 802.11 access point even though they were well within 802.11 range with very little obstruction..On a hunch I pulled out the cordless keyboard/mouse system and shelved it and the connection problems went away. I wish these devices were a bit smarter about collisions and finding some way to avoid them.
Yeah, a network interface on a printer is often a cause of trouble. It's bad enough if it has an open lpr port where anyone can print to it - you end up having to firewall the printer to stop unauthorized printing. It's worse if there is some fancy-schmancy 'control panel' available with a web browser; again, either there's no security or at best it involves a plaintext password.
And the sophisticated queuing software installed on many printers tends to crash, with no way to fix the problem (since you don't have the source).
But none of this is necessary. It would be much easier just to have a parallel port connected to a print server (which you will probably need anyway) and do any queuing or other fun stuff on the print server, with software you can fix, on an operating system you're familiar with. Removing an extra layer of queuing (the printer's own queue) would also lessen the black-hole-ness of submitting a print job and make it easier to cancel or promote jobs (can be done on the print server). Cutting out the unncessarily bloated firmware would probably make the printer a bit cheaper also.
The only intelligence that needs to be on the printer is a PostScript rasterizer, and even that isn't necessary if you can get a 600dpi bitmap page to the printer fast enough. It's a shame that SCSI-based printing never really took off. Although parport is pretty fast these days too.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Some Carnegie Mellon University folks conducted this experiment (PDF format). A continuously-operating Bluetooth link in close proximity to an 802.11 link caused a few percent 802.11 packet loss, and sometimes caused the 802.11 link to fallback to lower data rates. This is even with one of the 802.11 nodes right between the BT nodes, which were 6 feet apart. Sounds tolerable to me...
I don't have an ethernet printer at home, but I do use SSH tunnels there (to get my mail, and run VNC, and/or X).
The last place I worked had an open 802.11 network, but it was treated as "outside the firewall" by everything at work. They also have another open 802.11 network in another building that is inside the firewall, which is a bad idea.
Well I am picking at straws, it is my vocation, and my great skill. Oh, and I like it.
However if you are talking the 802.11 A&E, it doesn't seem to be so secure. Have you read slashdot recently? :-) Generically, yes, A&E solves all problems like that, but which A&E method? KerbV? SSH? SSL?
I think most 802.11 networks will be set up with no A&E, or with 802.11's WEP, which hasn't been all that successful. Those are the easy choices. Doing something else will be hard, nonstandard, and stand some chance of working.
(of corse easy and standard would be making the wireless network outside the normal firewall, but many places find that too inconvenient)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I may be out of touch with reality. Of all my friends with a ethernet network at home, they all also have a wireless network. Many of them have a wired network in only one or two rooms while the wireless covers the bulk of their houses (and part of the yards).
I know of a much smaller number of people with no wired network who are thinking of doing a wireless network.
My theory is that a wired network in one room is cheap and easy (the hardest part is getting an ISP to support it, or setting up NATing yourself). A wired network covering more then one room is normally kind of hard and/or costly (it is pretty easy and cheap if the house is still being built though!). A wireless network for a whole house is modestly expensive, but just as easy to install (plug a wireless card into all machines, plug in a access point).
So anyone with a single room network and get a whole house network quite easily by setting up 802.11. If you have a laptop it's a really easy choice :-) If you already have a multiroom network, I'm going to assume you are a true geek, and be quite intrested in having a wireless network as well. So both those cases make sense.
The no wired network, wireless only makes less sense. In part because it is so easy to do a one room network, and it is faster and somewhat safer. The one case where it makes sense is someone who can get a "cable modem" (or regular modem) into a room they don't want the computer in, and it is hard to get that access to the computer room. Then a wireless network might make more sense. I'm not sure people that don't want computers in every room really deserve wireless networks though :-)
Neither 802.11 nor Bluetooth has a truly usable authentication scheme.
The way this ought to work is that wireless devices should have to be "introduced" before they talk. A separate "introduction interface", using short-range IR or physical contact, is needed. The idea is that if you want the printer to talk to a laptop, you point them at each other, they exchange keys, you punch a button on each saying you approve, and thereafter they can talk. Less-portable devices should be introduced through some intermediary, like a palmtop. Underneath is a crypto system, but the users never see it.
RSA Data Security once developed a security architecture along these lines, using something called the "fob" (as in key fob, a physical device on a keychain). But that was in the 1980s, and it was too early. It's time now.
A nice open-source project would be to implement this for devices that have both IRdA and a wireless connection
Yep. My network doesn't seem to leave my yard, but there there may be more sensitive 802.11 cards. I have dealt with it by having my dhcp server send me mail if it sees a new MAC address. If I ever get that mail, I can decide what to do about it.
I'm making the assumption that an "attacker" (or freeloader) would try the simple thing of just hooking up and trying DHCP.
Seriously, though: a reasonably well-designed IrDA system will work fine in diffuse daylight. IrDA may not work if the receiver looks directly at the sun, but that's not so good for electronics anyway. The IR signals can be amplified to allow for diffuse reflections. If two devices don't communicate even if there is a cover, then clearly the problem isn't sunlight, it's a hardware or software problem.
you understand very little about the GPL, it does nothing to prevent forking, it is one of the freedoms that it gives people.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.