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November 8, 2004

Bluetooth To Be Made Vaguely Faster, Harder to Use

By Glenn Fleishman

The Bluetooth SIG responds to its near-term extinction by tripling speeds and lengthening security codes: Bluetooth’s blazing fast 1 Mbps maximum speed will be tripled in a new version to 3 Mbps. Send up the fireworks. Enhanced Data Rate will be certified next year, but a few products offer it now.

Security will also be improved, but it’s hard to see how this will help Bluetooth any: the current four-digit codes will be lengthened to make it harder to sniff a Bluetooth pairing and crack it offline. Since Bluetooth is already irritating to handshake—why not use a simplified public-key infrastructure to handle keys for users since on group owns the spec?—a longer sequence means more likelihood of failure. You see where Wi-Fi went: either a credentials-based login with a username and password (802.1X) or passphrase—not arbitrary PIN sequences—for WPA.

Bluetooth is reeling from the ratification and/or industry-group cohesion and near-term deployment of several technologies that challenge its basis: low-power, cost, and “simplicity.” Bluetooth was supposed to be easier than Wi-Fi, if you can remember when that was the case.

Zigbee is designed for extremely low-power, short-range use as a way to communicate configuration information among primarily home electronics. WIth a standard configuration schema, you could actually have a universal remote control. Zigbee devices are a trade group version of IEEE 802.15.4.

Ultrawideband (UWB) has the potential for several hundred megabytes per second over very short distances, and a reasonable speed at as much as 30 meters, and the power use and cost should make it competitive when it really starts rolling in 2006. UWB’s first incarnation will be either as a version of 802.15.3a, a high-speed personal area network standard, or in the splinter groups that represent a majority of the industry—the Multi-Band OFDM Alliance, the Wireless USB Promoters Group, and others.

Finally, even 802.11b in its single-chip, low-power version available from several firms, may give Bluetooth a run for its money. If cell phones and other devices wind up embedding 802.11b or its faster 802.11g relative, then why bother with Bluetooth at all? For extremely low battery use devices, like earpieces, I can see the problem with Wi-Fi. But for most other categories, they’re going to have to learn to live with low-power Wi-Fi to be useful in the coming months and years.

Posted by Glennf at November 8, 2004 10:54 AM

Categories: Bluetooth, Future

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» Bluetooth To Be Made Faster from Lockergnome's Mobile Lifestyle
A testament to 'faster is not always better, Wi-Fi Networking News reports that is being bumped up from 1Mbps to a full 3 Mbps.As if that was not enough, security will also be improved too. On the down side though,... [Read More]

Tracked on November 8, 2004 10:15 PM

» Bluetooth 2.0, empieza la controversia from mobile.uberbin.net
Ayer, el SIG (Blutooth Special Interest Group) anunció la adopción de Bluetooth Version 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), esta nueva especificación promete transferencia de datos hasta tres veces más veloz y un 50% de consumo de energía, para mejora... [Read More]

Tracked on November 9, 2004 5:01 PM

» Bluetooth To Be Made Faster from Lockergnome's Mobile Lifestyle
A testament to 'faster is not always better, Wi-Fi Networking News reports that it is being bumped up from 1Mbps to a full 3 Mbps. As if that was not enough, security will also be improved too. On the down... [Read More]

Tracked on November 10, 2004 1:17 PM

Comments

Posted by: idio at November 9, 2004 8:20 AM

Posted by: Glenn Fleishman at November 8, 2004 8:26 PM

Posted by: BTBrad at November 8, 2004 7:18 PM