Many people appreciate Bluetooth's ease of use, but the protocol's one MegaBit per second transfer rate still pales in comparison to standard Wi-Fi devices. The Bluetooth 2.0 protocol was ratified November of 2004 and the first devices are just beginning to ship. Its theoretical three MegaBits per second transfer rate won't have Wi-Fi looking over its shoulder any time soon, but it's still three times faster than the previous generation.
Bluetooth devices burst data across the 2.402 to 2.4835 GigaHertz range. Older Bluetooth 1.2 devices had a theoretical data transfer rate of one MegaBit per second, but Bluetooth packets, like other network packets, do have some overhead. This limits the real data transfer rate to around 723 KiloBits per second. The new 2.0 devices will be able to transfer three times as fast as 1.2 devices, but the faster transfer rate is not the real reason for jumping to Bluetooth 2.0.
Currently there are very few devices that max out the 723 KiloBit per second transfer rate of Bluetooth 1.2 devices, but being able to use several Bluetooth devices on a single network is the main reason people should switch to the new protocol. You are now seeing people using Bluetooth keyboards, headsets PDAs at the same time. This is stretching the limits of the Bluetooth 1.2 standard and the only solution was to increase the total transfer rate.
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TG Daily
Dec 13, 2005, 03:50 PM
