You aren’t crazy. I remember this being posited as a wifi alternative too. They claimed you could have a Bluetooth signal that wouldn’t reach beyond the walls of your home, preventing outside people (neighbors etc) from piggybacking on your network even if they had a password or the network was open because of the short range. And that tech does sort of exist today. A lot of mesh wifi routers use Bluetooth to connect to each other and provide that wifi to you in whatever part of your home you happen to be in. IOT devices do this as well. I believe this was called a piconet. But it never caught on, and I think it was more a theoretical idea than an actual real push.
Oh wow, I’m glad Bluetooth lost given that it’s vastly inferior. I mean we’re even starting to see wifi headphones now, soon Bluetooth will be relegated to legacy devices.
I wonder if it would still be an issue had Bluetooth won the wireless network stack war.
Wireless Network Stack War? Do you mind enlightening me? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
It came down to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to be the wireless network standard. For a hot minute it wasn’t clear who would come out the winner.
I can’t find shit about it though. It was around 2000ish.
You’re probably thinking about homerf, which was the competitor to WiFi. I don’t think Bluetooth was ever marketed as an alternative to WiFi.
It could be a Mandela effect thing. 🤷
not even close. They were always intended for different purposes. They never were in competition
You aren’t crazy. I remember this being posited as a wifi alternative too. They claimed you could have a Bluetooth signal that wouldn’t reach beyond the walls of your home, preventing outside people (neighbors etc) from piggybacking on your network even if they had a password or the network was open because of the short range. And that tech does sort of exist today. A lot of mesh wifi routers use Bluetooth to connect to each other and provide that wifi to you in whatever part of your home you happen to be in. IOT devices do this as well. I believe this was called a piconet. But it never caught on, and I think it was more a theoretical idea than an actual real push.
Oh wow, I’m glad Bluetooth lost given that it’s vastly inferior. I mean we’re even starting to see wifi headphones now, soon Bluetooth will be relegated to legacy devices.