
Bluetooth 4.2 includes IPv6 support - cek
http://www.bluetooth.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/4-2/bluetooth4-2.aspx#control
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kstrauser
OK, I'm pretty dumb about Bluetooth so feel free to laugh:

Why does BT know or care about IPv6? It have thought it was a physical layer,
like Ethernet, that you could pass IPv4, IPv6, PPP-over-ATM, or whatever thing
you wanted to over it. My home network switch doesn't support or not support
IPv6. Why would Bluetooth?

~~~
tw04
They want it to compete with other internet of things technologies like
z-wave.

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teraflop
I wish they provided enough actual technical details to see what's new here.
As far as I'm aware, the usual way to do IP-over-Bluetooth encapsulation is
using the Personal Area Networking profile [1], which has required support for
IPv6 support since 2001. (I've never tested it on real hardware with anything
other than IPv4, so maybe it was specified but never implemented? Regardless,
it seems odd that a mechanism that tunnels Ethernet packets would have to care
about higher levels of the protocol stack.)

[1]: [http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/15/Bluetooth/PAN-
Profile....](http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/15/Bluetooth/PAN-Profile.pdf)

~~~
rwg
I'm guessing it's related to IPv6 over Bluetooth Low Energy, which is
currently working its way through the bowels of the IETF:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6lo-
btle](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6lo-btle)

Basically, they saw what a glorious success 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over 802.15.4) has
been (</sarcasm>), realized BLE/L2CAP has a fair bit in common with 802.15.4
(focus on minimizing power consumption, low data rates, crazy small per-packet
payload sizes), and decided to reuse 6LoWPAN's IPv6 header compression (RFC
6282) in this IPv6-over-BLE standard.

~~~
teacup50
To be fair, 6lowpan has suffered in no small part due to 802.15.4 itself
having no real deployment outside of use for proprietary mesh network
protocols.

BTLE has far, far, far wider hardware deployment.

------
0x0
Will this require updated hardware, or is it enough to update the software
stack for devices with 4.0 hardware? The FAQ wasn't clear.

(The FAQ did go on for lengths about branding "bluetooth 4.2" vs "bluetooth
smart" vs "bluetooth smart ready" vs "bluetooth". Have they learnt nothing
from the "HD Ready" silliness? Also it's weird to see that "bluetooth low
energy is an optional part of the specification". Sounds like a "fun" spec to
implement)

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cyberjunkie
I don't know. I kinda chuckled at the last image on the page. I thought it
looked like some sort of mission control for an interstellar space launch,
with a random tourist couple in lab coats at the helm, with no clue of what is
going on in the screens.

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gonzo
[http://www.iij-ii.co.jp/lab/seminars/slides/iijlab-
seminar-2...](http://www.iij-ii.co.jp/lab/seminars/slides/iijlab-
seminar-20130807.pdf)

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th0br0
This is awesome. OTOH, I wonder whether 4.3 will then introduce a HW-based
firewall approach to the IoT devices running 4.2 ... (which we might have by
... 2028?)

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twrkit
Pardon my hardware ignorance (I'm one of those 'software guys'), but could
something like this be used for a close-proximity meshnet?

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cek
Imagine when an OpenSSL like bug is found in the firmware in all these IPv6
over BT lightbulbs?

~~~
mey
My biggest fear of the "Internet of things"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things#Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things#Security)

