Bluetooth

2. BLUETOOTH 4.2 recently arrived, the first iteration of the stalwart standard that
allows direct connection to the internet over IP.
The INQUIRER caught up with senior marketing director Errett Kroeter and
technical programme manager Martin Woolley from the Bluetooth Special
Interest Group (SIG) to bring us up to speed on what's new since we last spoke in
2013.
Bluetooth SIG is a user body which has just surpassed 25,000 member
organisations, working together for best practice and cohesion in the Bluetooth
standard.
"This is the most connected, most secure and most nimble version of Bluetooth
yet. We've upgraded to fully FIPS-compliant encryption and added a privacy
feature which makes it very hard to track a Bluetooth device," says Kroeter.
We've made sure any device, say a Fitbit, isn't advertising the same address all
the time, so you can't track a single device down to a single location.
Manufacturers can now mask the address, but also change it on a time-variable
basis."
Bluetooth 4.2 sees upgrades specific to Bluetooth Smart rather than Bluetooth
Classic, although both are served by the standard. Part of Bluetooth's longevity is
reliant on its full backwards compatibility right the way back to Bluetooth 1.0.
"We've increased the data capacity by about 10x in any given transmission,
which means data transfer is 2.5x faster," says Koeter.