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Bluetooth Plans to Triple Bandwidth
stallard writes "Yahoo! news reports that "The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) Monday is releasing a three-year road map for Bluetooth short-range wireless technology that includes a tripling of bandwidth and the ability to multicast signals to seven other users.""
Whoopedy freakin' dooo...
I don't need more bandwidth from my phone to my PDA/laptop, I need more bandwidth from my phone to the tower. When GPRS picks up the snail's pace a bit then maybe we can focus on speeding up Bluetooth.
Or am I the only one who only uses BT for phone-> device communication?
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
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When they say the UWB is 5 years out, I call that low level FUD. It's very nearly ready for prime time. Certainly for applications like PAN and such. This is going to compete directly with Bluetooth. The bigger and juicier UWB apps like thru-wall imaging radars are still a few years off. Personally I'm looking forward to UWB. If it all goes to plan my next DVD player will connect to my new TV wirelessly eliminating the need for all household cables. Except extention cords. But given time, we'll get rid of those too. Incidentally the holdup on many UWB apps is the integrated antenna. Its proving very hard to build small antennas with the bandwidth required.
Does that mean trippling of the range??? I'd sure appreciate a fetaure like that... Here're some bluejacking links. Also, great general bluetooth info on the WebLogsInc.
This may have something to do with current bluetooth capabilities. Bluetooth based networks currently support piconets with a master and seven slaves. Presume they simply extended this to support multicasting
Has anybody here tried to develop software to run bluetooth hardware? It's enough to make you cry! Has the SIG done anything to try and make developing applications easier?
Hmm.... I see our wireless theater coming one step closer.
;-)
3 times the bandwidth => 3+ stereo signals
I say 3+ because very few people need to broadcast thier music at a full 721kbs.
multicasting => music from seven points in your house or seven speaker systems throughout it.
The makings for a wireless rave
If the 7-peer multicast limit comes from connecting to other Bluetooth phones as the slaves in a BT piconet, can they each connect to 7 other devices in their own piconets? A P2P (Piconet to Piconet) daisy chain? And will those P2P internets exclude the "peripheral" devices, like headphones and storage, that currently fill the piconets?
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make install -not war
Great, looks like we can now have multiway "Toothing", think of how many more interesting diseases I'll be able to pick up! Sexual deviancy has never been so easy. ;-)
For those of you that don't know what toothing is (Shame on you!), here are some links:
Forget dogging, here comes toothing
'Toothing' for Hi-Tech Sex with Strangers
Biting into the new sex text craze
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.
Why imagine? This is exactly what I do every day. I have a Nokia 6310i, an Palm Tungsten T3 and a bluetooth headset. Furthermore my Thinkpad T30 also has bluetooth built in. Bluetooth is a mandatory feature for me now. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you did without. It makes it vastly easier for electronic devices to communicate.
My phone is essentially a portable wireless base station in addition to being a phone. I can check email from either my PDA or laptop and connect through the phone without ever taking it out of my pocket or bag. If I need to sync my pda, no cables are necessary. I can touch dial numbers on my phone directly from my PDA address book. I just tap the number and it dials. I've surfed the web (albiet slowly) from my laptop while riding in a car on the highway and my phone was in the truck. Effectively my PDA and cell phone are a single device but I only have to carry the bits I'm actually going to use.
I see people compare bluetooth to 802.11X all the time but those folks miss the point. It's not about connecting to the internet. It's a replacement for almost any data-carrying wire. Bluetooth replaces my PDA sync cable, phone sync cable, mouse and keyboard USB cables, phone ear bud cable, and if needed my ethernet cable. Furthermore it could replace printer cables, IR ports, serial cables and several others. Most importantly I can take it anywhere.
WiFi is almost non-portable only replaces the ethernet cable because that is all it is designed to do. (and it does a good job of it, I'm not bashing WiFi) Bluetooth isn't optimized for what WiFi does so it's slower but also consumes less power and has other uses WiFi does not. If you are comparing WiFi to Bluetooth, you don't understand Bluetooth. Not everyone needs one or the other, but the comparison between them is silly. It's very much like comparing Firewire cables to Ethernet cables and arguing that one is better than the other. The argument just doesn't make sense.
Nokia seems to be unable to implement bluetooth correctly
I use a Nokia 6310i and bluetooth does work great. However I had to get a firmware update on my phone. If you have a 6310i, you need firmware revision 5.50. Other Nokia phones may have similar issues which could be the problem you are facing. If it is under warranty, you can get the upgrade done for free. Don't ask Nokia tech support, they're generally clueless with regard to Bluetooth and will tell you it's your adapter's fault. You might have to mail it in to get flashed depending on your location. I sent mine to Florida.
The bigger problem IMO with Nokia is their software on my PC which, to be blunt, sucks. It's nowhere near seamless to connect, very poorly designed, and is under some bizarre illusion that everyone uses Outlook in recent versions. Furthermore they have different versions for each phone which is completely not necessary.