IBM Does Bluetooth On Linux 38
Frank Carlos writes: "IBM released Linux-based applications technology based on the Bluetooth specification called BlueDrekar, which is a reference implementation of and a set of interfaces for the Bluetooth protocol stack. You can get the Transport Drivers for BlueDrekar(TM) Middleware at the developerWorks Open Source Zone."
Re:Yes, but protocol driver and API are not free (Score:2)
If you wanted to do something like this you'd have to come up with some way to tie the device to the system in question's bus.
If you can find a Bluetooth ISA card (ha ha) and a GG2+ bridgecard and stick it in your A2000 or A2500, then you should be able to write a driver.
I don't know what you'd have to do to stick it in a ZX Spectrum.
Yes, but protocol driver and API are not free (Score:2)
The tran sport driver [ibm.com] is cetainly a welcome contribution: even if it only covers UART it is a valuable reference inplementation released under the GPL.
But I'm not so sure about BlueDrekar [ibm.com] itself. Maybe it is just my natural schepticism against closed source implementations, and maybe it is just the single obviously IBM sponsored evaluation [ibm.com] that makes me unhappy, but:
Would you license it? (Maybe here is a topic for a /. poll...) Or do you feel that a free implementation is required before this technology will be implemented in volume?
I think Bluetooth is a neat technology, but I guess it is still some way off general availability.
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"Where do you come from?"
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:3)
Actually, it's more like how a 3c905 doesn't define any network protocols, because it's just a NIC. You can run netbeui, ipx, tcp/ip, appletalk, or what have you. There's no reason whatsoever that bluetooth shouldn't be the same.
Mind you, bluetooth will probably end up with several different network protocols. (Sorry, I never memorized the burrito's ingredients, so I'm going to speak in layman's terms.) Obviously lots of people will be interested in doing TCP/IP, over which they will almost certainly use DHCP for autoconfiguration. Since they're using TCP/IP they'll get into DNS pretty much by default. So these are all things we can be fairly sure will be present on a significant number of bluetooth devices.
The up side of this is that most of this is present on PDAs already, like the palmpilot, WinCE devices, and so on. They should all be able to interoperate fairly conveniently. Pick your device, do a DHCP request to autoconfigure, starting with LINK-LOCAL addresses, and whoever hears a request first (which probably means that they're the first to send but the other device wasn't ready) sets an IP (in the reserved range) and then serves the other machine's DHCP request.
You could well use simpler protocols like Microsoft's NetBEUI. In fact, on a non-internet-connected LAN made up of only Windows machines, NetBEUI is my default protocol of choice, because it's small and fast, has basically no overhead, and works without any configuration at all (At least, that the user has to see) so perhaps that's the best idea for use on Bluetooth, but since it's only implemented on Windows AFAIK, it's not bloody likely to become a standard. IPX would be another choice, but it's fallen out of favor in recent years, and it's not available on the majority of palmtops in any case.
Regardless of what protocol you choose, it should be TCP/IP :) TCP/IP is the only one that's available in basically every location. Hell, you can make an IBM PC-XT speak TCP/IP with either old dos software, or geoworks. If an XT can do it, I'm sold :)
Re:IBM linux commercial (Score:2)
Hey look, it's Sisko. I bet he hates that.
You know, if the commercial is in quicktime, how are you going to get moderated up? Everyone knows that linux users can't see them (ha ha). And yes, I know that's not always true, so b1t3 m3.
Frankly, I agree with previous posts; IBM just doesn't get it. Linux doesn't need advertising and it doesn't need a man in a turtleneck speaking like he thinks he's Shaft to tell people how badass it is. What it needs is for IBM to get off their ass and get to PORTING all that cool AIX crap (Not the crappy crap, just the cool stuff) to linux, get it running, and make it even more commercially viable. Save your money, don't spend it on ads; Hire more programmers.
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:3)
Bluetooth is being touted as two things. The first is as a replacement for wires. This is certainly happening now. But just because you can string a wire between two devices doesn't mean they'll talk to each other.
The second thing Bluetooth is being touted as is a way to do dynamic networking, and it will make everything talk to everything. However, even TCP/IP isn't included in the spec, so some devices my choose to not support it. In the area of service discovery, there are there different standards [cswl.com] that are being pushed... Sun's, Microsoft's, and an open group pushing Salutation. I like Jini the best because its drivers can be used on any platform and the devices can carry their drivers with them. But it doesn't specify a common transport.
Bluetooth seems to only make the Physical, DataLink, and Network layers standard. With more than half of the 7 layer burrito in limbo, I don't know how the protocol stack can hold up.
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Re:Yes, but protocol driver and API are not free (Score:2)
Personally, I require that some hardware hacker has added one to his Amiga 500. That's my personal mark of when a technology is ready for primetime.
Bluetooth and standards (Score:3)
Bluetooth is IrLA on steriods - it isn't line of site, being RF, it can go 10 to 100 meters, and it supports 7 nodes per master radio. They call that a piconet, beyound that you can connect a number of piconets. Not too bad for wiring a wireless home, one piconet per room.
There is a set of "profiles" that are specs on how to communicate between boxes. The profiles I know of are
Generic Access Profile
Service Discovery Profile Application Profile
Cordless Telephony Profile
Intercom Profile
Serial Port profile
Headset Profile
Dial-up Networking Profile
Fax Profile
Lan Access Profile
Generic Object Exchange Profile
Object Push Profile
File Transfer Profile
Synchronization Profile
Looks like a good start to me ... the protocol is royality free, the specs (~1500 pages) on CD do cost $100 - something of a bummer, but you can get them on-line at www.bluetooth.com
Re:Yes, but protocol driver and API are not free (Score:1)
Amiga: phah! ZX Spectrum [zx-museum.org.ru] rules! :-) If you can get it to run there, you can get it to run anywhere. (I know it is not true....)
I haven't studied the low-level spec for this purpose, so I wonder: could you make it work on some of these old devices? (The Spectrum wasn't great for comms: no real Basic support.) I have this vision of a computer museum with all the old computers connected via Bluetooth to the toaster and my wrist-watch.
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"Where do you come from?"
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:1)
The Bluetooth Spec, Vol. 2 Profiles [bluetooth.com] describes a Generic Object Exchange Profile. There are a couple of sub-profiles, Object Push and Synchronization that will describe transferring varioius data objects. vObjects (vCard, vCalendard, , etc objects) can be transferred.
The idea is that both the sender and receiver understand the type of object that is being transferred, where it should go and how to use it.
The Synchronization profile describes a method of synchronizing a desktop PC with a PDA, for instance.
Version in AVI (al, la xanim-friendly) (Score:1)
IBM linux commercial (Score:1)
btw the commercial is in quicktime
-Ben
Linux BLuetooth Protocol Stacks (Score:2)
For the listeners tuning in at home, Linux now has the following Bluetooth stacks:
Now how am I supposed to get the Linux USB Bluetooth driver to play nice with all of these?
Well it could be worse, we could have no Bluetooth stacks for Linux at all!
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:2)
-- flipping quickly through refrence books--
Lets see.... layers. Now why would some of the smartest brains in networking make a model based on layers? Thats a mystery....
Come on now. The entire point is that every single layer is independent of each other. Bluetooth is a layer 1 device. Thats a physical layer device for the networking deficent out there. They don't give a rats ass about the other six layers. Thats not their problem as long as they provide the appropriate API.
The hardware doesn't care what protocol is passed across. Maybe it does Ethernet, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it does IP, maybe it doesn't. Bluetooth doesn't care. They provide a way to transmit a bit from point A to point B, and then someone else has to figure out how this bits are arranged.
Bluetooth is a Godsend for the networking industry because *finally* someone has created an open standard for wireless. And it takes alot for me to say this since my company has succesfully marketed a propriatary wireless solution. If you want better content transfer, then write a better protocol.
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
I don't understand why people keep calling Bluetooth Vapourware when so many implementations and devices exist. It might not be available to the consumer but Bluetooth works fine.
Bluetooth blurb, links, Palm and TDK products (Score:1)
Also, check out the kick ass TDK Bluetooth devices [tdksys.com].
How Bluetooth Works (Score:2)
Re:Is Bluetooth Secure? (Score:2)
* with enough resourses, nothing is secure.
Re:Those links again (Score:3)
Anyone else notice the l=sdot in there? Since it was submitted by someone at IBM, it would seem that they want to track specifically how many people visit the site after reading it on Slashdot. Conspiracy? Its probably a good thing, since its bound to get tons of visitors and maybe make IBM consider releasing even more software for Linux.
Haiku (Score:1)
But I still trip on the cord.
Silly palm pilot.
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:1)
Alex Bischoff
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When I think of Bluetooth, (Score:2)
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Yopi and Bluetooth... (Score:1)
remotin` my little sun serverz with it
lookin` forward
Two
Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:2)
You may be thinking that I'm out of my mind - after all, Bluetooth is an open standard, right? But Bluetooth is nothing more than a way to pass bits and bytes. It can't make my Pilot actually speak intellegently to my Linux box. Sure, it can pass data, but what to do with it?
So far, there has been no standardization for content protocols over Bluetooth. The only "standard" that could be considered close is wrapping TCP/IP, from which you can get HTTP, XML, etc. for passing data. However, Bluetooth as it stands is not going to be the be-all and end-all of information transfer, because there is no common format.
What's needed is a common implementation of a method for applications to speak to each other over an open protocol. No manufacturers have been forthcoming about this. Instead, we see fracturing of devices, unable to actually speak to each other.
Until there is a common format, Bluetooth will fail. I hope someone will take the initaive to create an open standard for content transfer.
OT--Linux drivers for home networking peripherals (Score:1)
Do drivers exist, or are they being worked on, for any of the myriad home-networking systems you can buy off the shelf these days? I was looking at the Intel Anypoint 1.6Mbps USB towers. They also have 10Mbps PCI cards that use the 2nd twisted pair in a phone jack--but I have two phone lines so that is out.
Diamond also has home wireless and supposedly Dell is marketing some wireless PCI cards now. All of these ship with Win9x drivers. I'm wanting to run Linux on the computer where the cable modem will come in and then go wireless from there to 2-3 Win9x boxes. Is there any way to do this currently?
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:2)
Without a common layer1/2, it won't happen at all, period.. and by forming the Bluetooth SIG. and now bluetooth implementations, it is cheap and easy for manufacturers to make devices that can talk to each other via bluetooth. Certainly, they still have to aggree on higher layer protocol... but without bluetooth, they wouldn't get the chance.
And the same manufacturers that developed this technology, and put the money into the research would understand the network effect of compatability.
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:1)
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
Or if you can find a Tron video game machine, stand in the light eminating from the purple plastic border. Smile big! It will all become apparent.
Don't worry, we were all "newbies" once!
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:4)
You may be interested to know that IEEE is standardising Bluetooth wireless technology as 802.15 - perhaps they may address some of the issues you mention.
>Bluetooth as a wireless standard will fail. This >is the conclusion that I have come to after >watching the industry very carefully. The >reason? Not enough standardization.
I agree with the lack of standardisation, but I am not sure that it will cause the standard to fail. There is significant momentum behind the technology, and I suspect that will continue to drive it through - but unfortunately, the result may not be as ideal as was hoped.
Personally, there are aspects of the architecture that I think they could have done in a better way. I don't think that the architecture is conceptually abstract and rigid as it could be, and the lack of vision to include bandwidth extensibility, etc.
>So far, there has been no standardization for >content protocols over Bluetooth. The >only "standard" that could be considered close >is wrapping TCP/IP, from which you can get HTTP, >XML, etc. for passing data. However, Bluetooth >as it stands is not going to be the be-all and >end-all of information transfer, because there >is no common format.
I am not sure that there needs to be standardisation for content protocols. Bluetooth includes a Service Discovery Protocol that allows for any myriad of services to be developed and employed.
IMHO that is exactly what Bluetooth should do, just like TCP does not define any content protocols, because it is a transport layer.
>What's needed is a common implementation of a >method for applications to speak to each other >over an open protocol. No manufacturers have >been forthcoming about this. Instead, we see >fracturing of devices, unable to actually speak >to each other.
There is a common method in the Bluetooth SDP; and as far as I can see it does not preclude the use of something like Jini.
One problem I do see is that Bluetooth was designed to be something like an IrDA replacement, but now it is taken and used for other things outside of its design envelope. The question is whether the original conception of the design had enough vision to foresee these things, and will cope with them.
The key selling point of Bluetooth is economic - it is low cost and low power, and that's exactly what's needed for things like headsets and consumer electronics. Price pressure is everything. The Bluetooth chip manufacturers are at the cutting edge with RF-on-chip technology - and the winners in this race will be those that can come up with a small-size, low-power and low-cost solution.
My cynical perspective is that Bluetooth will become the technology of the wireless age, and like Microsoft and desktop computing, it will be both an enabler and a hindrance, and be somewhat controversial.
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:1)
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:2)
IPv6! How else to account for all that address space from millions (if not billions eventually) of devices?
;)
Your Working Boy,
No source code (Score:2)
Those links again (Score:3)
The links in the original post seems to be corrupted -- here they are again:
Can somebody fix the original?
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"Where do you come from?"
Re:What is "Bluetooth", anyway? (Score:2)
2mbps isn't good enough? It's enough for me to get my laptop routing thru my cell in my pocket, or for exchanging info with people without having to pull the palm out of the pocket, hit 'send', point at victim, etc.. It seems pretty neat to me for what it is...
it intentionally doesn't have enough range to be a substitute for wireless ethernet.
Why bother? 802.11 seems to be doing well enough, but its power requirements may not be suitable for small/light/low-power devices..
I'm interested to see where bluetooth goes..
Your Working Boy,
Re:Bluetooth as a Wireless Standard (Score:2)
You may want to checkout SyncML [syncml.org], which was specifically created to deal with getting the content from one device to the other. Bluetooth was designed to replace cables and does a pretty good job at that. I would much prefer to see a general solution such as SyncML be used that is not tied to Bluetooth. Seperation of functionality is a Good Thing(TM).
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