Access point - Bluetooth

[johne]

My main concern right now is all about 802.11b’s connectivity and performance.

Do you have any articles related to the performance of Access points? Some of my clients are asking questions on what is the optimal Capacity(users) when you are connected to an Access point to attain 11Mbps.

Aside from that, they are also asking about Bluetooth and Wi-FI connectivity. Does Bluetooth have the same frequency to the 802.11b? How can it be done?

[mupdike]

Bluetooth operates in the same freq range as 802.11b. The issue is it operates across the whole frequency, and hops very quickly across it. That means it's really seen as noise to any .11b client/AP and will severly interfere with any possible operation. If you want both to co-exist at this time you need to implement 802.11a. There are people looking to make the two technologies exist together, but I have not heard of any successes. In terms of capacity, I to, hav yet to come across any documentation that will tell you straight out how many clients per AP and would be interested to see what it would say.
Good luck.

[wolfgang]

802.15 is supposed to address the 802.11b/bluetooth interoperability problems.

[johne]

What do you mean by 802.15? This is the first time ive'd heard of it...
Correct me if i'm wrrng, As far as I know 802.11a isn't compatible with 802.b...if you want both to coexist you need to implement 802.11g...
Any comments?

[mupdike]

802.11a operates in the 5GHz range, and is not compatible with either .11b or .11g. Both .11b & .11g operate in the 2.4 GHz range, the difference is the encoding methods that result in g having a much greater speed capable. IEEE 802.155 is the group that is reposnsible for the bluetooth standards.

[MoleStrangler]

Below is a section of a report by two Ericsson research scientists entitled 'Bluetooth voice and data performance in 802.11 DS WLAn envrionment'.

9. CONCLUSIONS
In this document, simulation results are shown for Bluetooth data and voice connections in the presence of an interfering 802.11 DS WLAN system. The WLAN access points and terminals operate with a 20 dBm transmit power; the Bluetooth devices operate with a 0 dBm transmit power.

Under normal traffic conditions in the WLAN, the Bluetooth voice user is not affected as long as his operating distance remains below 2m. If the operating distance increases to 10m, the probability that there is a noticeable interference on the link increases to 8%. The Bluetooth data link allows and experiences more degradation.

A throughput reduction of more than 10% occurs with 24% probability at an operating distance of 10m. However, because of the limited frequency overlap of the WLAN and Bluetooth systems, the throughput reduction in the Bluetooth system can never exceed 22%.