Bluetooth is a network protocol for short-range wireless communication. It is an open standard, which means any company can make Bluetooth-enabled products. It is named in honor of Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark in the tenth century who united Denmark and Norway a millennium ago.
Other wireless networking technologies existed before Bluetooth, but they had a different design goal, such as putting a permanent network in place in a building where it was not feasible to run a lot of cabling. Bluetooth networks are not intended to last very long, but instead are created spontaneously and disappear quietly.
Previously, wireless networks connected the same sorts of devices as wired networks, such as desktop computers and printers. Bluetooth, though, appears in hand-held devices like cell phones, television remotes, and personal digital assistants. There is even a Bluetooth-enabled pen; when the user writes, nothing shows up on the paper, but the writing can later be transmitted to a computer for storage.
Most networks are installed by skilled technicians, but Bluetooth can't work that way, because the whole point is for the devices to be carried around everywhere. As a consequence, Bluetooth networks have to "install" themselves.
As long as a Bluetooth device is turned on, it is constantly seeking other Bluetooth devices. Each device sends out radio waves in the same frequency range used by cell phones, garage door openers, and others. The signal uses very little power, which limits the range to about thirty feet.
When two Bluetooth devices sense each other's presence, they form an ad hoc network called a piconet. One device is designated a master, and the other device a slave. The master drives all the communication in the piconet.
If other Bluetooth devices come into range, they can be added to the piconet as additional slaves; up to seven slaves can be attached to a single master. If even more devices come into range, multiple piconets can link together, with the master of one piconet playing the role of slave in another, an arrangement known as a scatternet. When the devices fall out of range with each other, the piconets and scatternets dissolve.
To get an idea of how useful Bluetooth could be if it were widely adopted, consider the following scenario. Juliet attends a seminar on robotics given by one of her university's professors. The professor uses a Bluetooth-enabled computer in the presentation, and Juliet has brought along her Bluetooth-enabled PDA.
She takes no notes because her professor's computer automatically transmits them to her PDA during the lecture. To get back to her apartment, Juliet takes the subway. As she passes the station gate, her PDA is her desktop computer, the professor's lecture is copied to the "Robotics" folder on her computer.
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