Monday, November 18, 2002
What I Don't Like About BlueTooth
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 04:02 PM
Russ Smith from Pocketnow.com has written a very thought-provoking article on Bluetooth. This isn't the usual "Bluetooth Sucks" or "Bluetooth Rules" rhetoric we sometimes see - Russ approaches it from a deeply technical level, and this isn't something I had thought about previously. Make me wonder if Bluetooth has what it takes for a long life.
"As you've no doubt read elsewhere, Microsoft has decided to embrace the BlueTooth technology and support it on an operating system level in a revision to Windows XP. That's good news from the standpoint that it will help to solve some of the conflicting implementation problems. Unfortunately, BlueTooth has a number of problems, inherent in its design, which have nothing to do with how well it's integrated on the desktop.
These problems all result of the BlueTooth standard trying to do too much. Because of that, many BlueTooth implementations can't do enough. Clear as mud? Try this: The creators of BlueTooth violated one of the key rules of networking: You don't mix the way in which information is transferred from one device to another with the services the device offers. The mechanism and protocols for moving packets of information from one device to another is a "low-level" function. Higher level functions such as file transfers, data security, and resource access, shouldn't care at all how the packets are moved. All they care is that they ask for some data and it gets there."
"As you've no doubt read elsewhere, Microsoft has decided to embrace the BlueTooth technology and support it on an operating system level in a revision to Windows XP. That's good news from the standpoint that it will help to solve some of the conflicting implementation problems. Unfortunately, BlueTooth has a number of problems, inherent in its design, which have nothing to do with how well it's integrated on the desktop.
These problems all result of the BlueTooth standard trying to do too much. Because of that, many BlueTooth implementations can't do enough. Clear as mud? Try this: The creators of BlueTooth violated one of the key rules of networking: You don't mix the way in which information is transferred from one device to another with the services the device offers. The mechanism and protocols for moving packets of information from one device to another is a "low-level" function. Higher level functions such as file transfers, data security, and resource access, shouldn't care at all how the packets are moved. All they care is that they ask for some data and it gets there."
