RIM Crippling BlackBerry Bluetooth Speed?

Alex King writes " I organized a bounty for the creation of a 'BlackBerry as a modem' solution for Mac OS X earlier this year. The resulting product — Pulse, from Brain Murmurs — allows you to use your BlackBerry as a standard Bluetooth modem. It works great on both Windows and Mac. Current problem: The Pulse solution doesn't run as fast as it used to. Brain Murmurs did a bunch of testing and working with their users and found the problem: RIM has crippled the Bluetooth speeds in recent OS upgrades. Is this a 'mistake' on RIM's side that will be fixed? Or did they do this on purpose for some reason?"

Comments

Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Maybe the author of the blog should have considered asking RIM what the problem is?

I guess the point of the blog (and the trollish /. headline) is to generate plenty of hits to a page which extolls the virtues of the software & software house in question.

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[nonlnear]

...without pulling wild speculation out of their ass.

But isn't that what Slashdot is all about? Well, that and goatse

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[illuminatedwax]

I think he's actually look to get employment with RIM. You know. A position at RIM. A career with RIM. In other words

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[mfh]

I don't see how anyone here on Slashdot, short of being an employee of RIM, will be able to answer your question without pulling wild speculation out of their ass.

I don't work at RIM but I can tell you from the vast depths of my own experience as a coder -- if some code has changed, it was probably intentional. Coders are lazy (therefore opposed to making unplanned deliberate changes) and we also have the cushiest jobs in the universe (apart from Wil Wheaton's sideline gig at SG -- the lucky bastard!!!). Although, I'm sure equal emphasis could be placed on our heavy reliance on World of Warcraft, to the point where we might accidentally slip a few decimals on boring RL stuff while browsing AH for deals that can dance.

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[camperdave]

So... He's taking a RIM shot?

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[jrockway]

...without pulling wild speculation out of their ass.

  But isn't that what Slashdot is all about? Well, that and goatse

Goatse is how the wild speculation gets in our asses to begin with.

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[cdrudge]

Actually, I think he was trying to get was a RIM job.

Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is?

[GreyPoopon]

Goatse is how the wild speculation gets in our asses to begin with.

It also allows for much wilder speculation than average.

This is a problem for...

[MrNonchalant]

We here at Slashdot will rationally analyze all the nuances of your question before replying with a well-researched and neutral opinion. You just wait.

Other Bluetooth speed anomalies.

[nxtw]

I've got a Samsung Blackjack with Cingular HSDPA. On the phone itself or via USB, I can pull 700kbit/sec down on a bandwidth test.

Yet over Bluetooth network access profile, I can only get around 300kbit/sec. Both devices are Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and I'm using the Widcomm Bluetooth stack that came with the laptop. The network devices claims a connection at 700kbit/sec, and the theoretical maximum of 2.0+EDR is 2.1MBit/sec IIRC.

Any ideas?

Why on earth would RIM want you to do this?

[Archeopteryx]

You abuse their network with your modem software. They have a network designed for messaging, and you want to send huge files over it. I don't blame them for wanting to cripple a capability that they never wanted to sell you.

You get what you pay for. Usually.

Re:Why on earth would RIM want you to do this?

[waldo2020]

RIM didn't design the cell phone network, dorkwad. RIM the other devices work over the approved and paid for data channels. If you are paying $80/mo for "unlimited data" you better damn well get what the system can handle. And FYI, CDMA and GSM systems use a time division multiplex method so it's not like a cable modem link shared with the neighbourhood; you can't choke the whole system by being a data-hog, at most you can consume your alloted time-slice.

Re:Why on earth would RIM want you to do this?

[Jimithing DMB]

Wow.. this is so wrong:

RIM didn't design the cell phone network, dorkwad. RIM the other devices work over the approved and paid for data channels. If you are paying $80/mo for "unlimited data" you better damn well get what the system can handle. And FYI, CDMA and GSM systems use a time division multiplex method so it's not like a cable modem link shared with the neighbourhood; you can't choke the whole system by being a data-hog, at most you can consume your alloted time-slice.

As other replies have mentioned, CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access. Each packet is tagged with a small code similar to the way ethernet packets are tagged with a MAC address. GSM is a TDMA system (Time Division ...) which relies on phones transmitting in an allotted time slot (milliseconds). This could be likened to a token ring network in some ways

That is bad enough but then you go on to state that it's not like a cable modem link. Huh? It is exactly like a cable modem link. In fact, just about any network or bus, wired or wireless, uses some sort of scheme to allow for multiple transmitters. In DOCSIS you have both a MAC (code) as well as an allotted time slot. DOCSIS takes it a bit further and does ranging. Basically, it pings the node at the head end until it gets an accurate picture of how long an electrical signal takes to reach the node. This allows the cable modem to adjust its transmissions such that when it transmits in a given timeslot it won't collide with another modem's time slot due to signal delay differences. The speed of electrons is after all only so fast.

I could go on and on here by pointing out that for example a T1 line is actually 24 time divided channels or that a PCI bus works on an acquisition basis. Next time before calling the parent poster a dorkwad (what are you 11?) you might actually want to know what you are talking about.

IP over RF always limits bandwidth

[jmorris42]

Haven't seen an IP over RF provider who didn't start ruthlessly choking off bandwidth to anyone who actually consumes more than a few sips of their 'high speed Internet' products. It is OK if you do a few short bursts now and again, that is the usage model they built their network around. A Blouetooth connection to a laptop implies more than that so once the network operator noticed they had users USING their network they acted quickly to fix the problem.

The crux of the problem is that no RF system that has been deployed has enough bandwidth to supply 'broadbad' like connectivity to very many people at the same time. So the early adopters get it good, tell their friends and watch it all turn to crap. Unless we see microcells on every lamppost we aren't likely to ever solve the problem either. And no amount of marketing promises can change it, you can't repeal the laws of physics.

Cable modems had exactly the same problem of a shared resource quickly becoming overused. The cable industry could solve it by breaking up their originally simplistic network into lots of small segments because they could string FIBER to backhaul all of the neighborhood networks. Unless the wireless companies want to do likewise they are never going to be a player in the broadband game as anything other than a niche product priced high (billed by the bit) enough to limit usage to the available spectrum.

Re:IP over RF always limits bandwidth

[The Master Control P]

Who says it takes a malicious provider to make IP over RF suck?

I'm sitting here with my computer 20 feet from my 802.11g hub, getting an alleged 80% signal and 54mbps connection. Yet lo and behold, when I actually transfer data to my server (hooked to the hub over 100m ethernet), I get more like 10 megabits per second instead of 50. Unless there's some malicious program on the hub (!), wireless sucks compared to wired for speed.

One thing that RIM is crippling

[toadlife]

Since the question of this story is rather pointless, I'll go slightly off topic.

One thing that RIM is "crippling" is 911 systems across the nation. My wife and I both have one of those new Blackberry 8100 Pearl smartphones. It's really nice, except for one major flaw. When the phone is locked, pressing the scroll wheel once, rolling it down and pressing it again automatically makes a call to 911 - and there is no way to turn it off. It may seem like with three actions required (press, roll, press), it wouldn't be that easy to accidentally make a call, but my two year old son disagrees. He has made at least ten 911 calls over the last week on mine and my wifes phones combined and a couple of times the calls were triggered when the phone was just sitting in my pocket.

With all of our previous phones, we would lock them and if my son picked them up it would be no big deal. Now, we are forced to either have our phones on us at all time, or put them on the top of the fridge or some other extremely inaccessible place.

I've put a request in to RIM to make it so you can disable that feature in their next software update. Hopefully they listen.

Re:One thing that RIM is crippling

[DrKyle]

You can teach a TEN year old not to play with your phone, but a TWO year old isn't going to listen to your explanation about not playing with it to dial 911 by accident.

A phone is not a razor blade, grenade or flame thrower. I let my kids play with my phone (when locked), the remote, the mouse and keyboard on the computer (with Toddlerkeys enabled). They see their parents hitting buttons and doing things and they want to emulate us to some extent and see what the big deal is about and their curiosity should be encouraged. The problem here is entirely with RIM, any keypress which can accidentally happen just by shoving the phone in your pocket and dial 911 is not a feature, it's a bug.

Why not open source the software?

[crazyray]

Dear AlexKing, Instead of accusing RIM of disabling your "bountied" software, why don't you open source it so that we can all look for bugs in the implementation? After all, when the bounty was offered no one told any of the contributors that this would be for a commercial, closed source product, and many of us who contributed to the project are angry and disappointed that it was hijacked for a proprietary, closed project. Open it up!!!

Re:Why not open source the software?

[mumkin]

Alex King doesn't own the software... he organized the bounty to encourage someone else to undertake it.

It was a pretty small bounty -- $675 -- and I think he lays out his reasoning quite cogently in this blog post.

No, fact check.

[Kadin2048]

When you use a Blackberry as a GSM modem, the data never (or at least, shouldn't ever) travels over RIM's network. It's not like you're chunking a file into little pieces and attaching it to emails. It's just using the Blackberry's connection to the cellular network to transfer data.

If the cellular company didn't want you doing that, they could certainly ratelimit you, but generally most people using smartphones have an unlimited-data plan, which would let them use a PC Card-style GSM modem or other type of phone to push as many packets as they wanted. The cellular infrastructure is designed to give data service a lower priority than voice calls, and it's all designed with QoS in mind -- this isn't like your neighborhood cable modem setup. I know that T-Mobile doesn't mind if you use full-speed Internet access on your EDGE device; that's included in the $30/mo extra you pay for data access. (I assume if you were really abusive in some way, they might cut you off, but that's not the issue here.)

I think that this guy should send a polite letter to RIM asking what the deal is. I don't get if it's an all-over Blackberry issue, or a PC/Mac one, where PC users can do this modem thing at full speed, and Mac users get a reduced rate. If that's the case, then it's fairly odd. But more likely, I tend to wonder if they didn't just drop the rate on the BT connection because they never figured that anybody would be doing anything with it other than using BT headsets and syncing data with their desktop computer from time to time. Maybe the lower connection prevents packet loss in other circumstances. At any rate, it seems odd for them to crap so obviously over a feature, particularly one that some of their competitors' products offer.

Having worked on a BT product I agree

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Before looking for a communist under every bush, consider that there are quite a few things to get right to get BT working. A BT driver depends on other drivers (eg often serial drivers) and slight changes in the realtime behaviour of drivers can cause link errors which cause corruptions and retires etc and ultimately reduce BT throughput. Extra interrupts etc in the system can easily cause BT errors.

Re:Having worked on a BT product I agree

[arivanov]

That would have been the case with any BT driver and any BT product but crackberry. The crackberry is usually placed by operators on all-you-can-eat plans which presume only mail access to the crackberry server. The crackberry server eats surprisingly (actually the best word is phenomanally) little bandwidth. 1Kbit average per 20 users is normal. As a result the operators can afford all-you-can-eat without a problem. The moment the users start actively using it for data these assumptions go out of the window.

So, I would not be surprised if the operators demanded the feature and the feature got rolled out quietly. In other words, I would not be surprised if there is a communist hidden in the Bush.

Thats just silly

[pablo_max]

Did anyone actually look at the feature with RIM claims on the Bluetooth PICS? I guess not. Can it be that they are supporting the faster modulation? Even if it were bluetooth 2.0, they are not required to support 4-DPQSK and 8-DPSK. Basic GMSK modulation is all that is mandatory. It's not really possible to lower the speed in the ways they suggest actually. It's clear that this person really knows nothing about Bluetooth at all. Check out the core spec at bluetooth.com

In other news, Nextel acquitted...

[mtmra70]

In other news, Nextel acquitted on accusations of crippling BT data speeds. The Judge replied, "Simply, they do not offer data over BT. I could not rule them guilty over something they do not offer".

Nextel was over more than happy with this ruling and stated they will continue to not offer many other services.

Re:Oh stop it.

[Frosty Piss]

I'm reminded of the time I saw this lady in a warehouse store give her baby in her cart her cell phone, she thought is was sooooooo cute, the baby would put it up to its ear... Than the baby threw it as hard as it could on the concrete floor...

Beaten Black and Blue

[Unanimous Cowturd]

Slow Bluetooth on Blackberry? Who greenlighted this decision? This makes me see red. If they ever catch the yellow, lily-livered blackguard, I hope they give him a pink slip. - - Orange you glad I stopped after two lines?

Re:How should I know?

[PinkPanther]

yes, there are RIM employees who read and post to Slashdot.

My god man! Do you realize what you are proposing? Canadians on Slashdot ??!!?? Oh, the horror.