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More signs of the bumpy road ahead for Bluetooth.

SOURCE: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-202-3958613.html

quote:

---

. . . . Such a demonstration also brings up the potential problems with Bluetooth: People may not always want to take part in the dialogues that are possible between electronic devices. However, Classwave spokeswoman Gwen Carlson said she does not believe consumers will be bombarded by unwanted advertisements.

"You will not be able to be spammed," Carlson pledged.

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I for one can't wait for Bluetooth to arrive. But this has always been my concern with Bluetooth. How will it prevent unwanted communication? I don't want my phone or my Visor talking to every single device I pass by in the office or on the street. The communication restrictions will have to be bullet-proof for Bluetooth not to be a total debacle.

Expect bugs with first generation devices

I'm suggesting that we should expect, in the case of Bluetooth, more than the usual crop of bugs that one sees in first generation devices. Remember the compatability problems with modems back in the 80s and early 90s? That happened with much simpler devices and vastly less ambitious communications specifications.

Any first generation specification is going to have areas that are open to interpretation, and these areas of ambiguity will result in different engineers implementing product features that utilize the spec in different ways (often to provide a feature that will make their product stand out from the competition). My scan of the Bluetooth spec last spring left me with the impression that security, in general; and authentication, in particular, are going to be areas to test carefully when devices begin to ship. BTW, the spec should still be available for download.

Also note that they are already working on a second version of the Bluetooth specification . . . "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" . . . Sorry for invoking images of a bygone non-color screen era, but it seemed particularly relevant as I gaze at my VDX's screen.

Ericsson still has quite a large amount of detailed information on their Bluetooth site (they are after all one of the founders of the technology). I believe it is http://bluetooth.ericsson.se/bluetooth.

I don't feel the need to be THAT skeptical and cynical about it; I'd like to think that these people have learned a thing or two from some of those growing pains of the past (like the afore mentioned modem incompatibilities).

My main concern continues to be security. They have three main security features:

• a challenge-response routine - for authentication, which prevents spoofing and unwanted access to critical data and functions.
  
• stream cipher - for encryption, which prevents eavesdropping and maintains link privacy.
  
• session key generation - session keys can be changed at any time during a connection.

Jesse Berst is concerned too, but not about security

See - http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/sto...2663513,00.html

Damn. I always have to come back and fix the URL code here; seems that the parser can't figure out that a comma is valid in an address . . .

[Edited by yucca on 12-12-2000 at 02:23 PM]