Re:Wireless Is a Trap
by yencabulator on Sunday June 21, 2020 @07:46PM
(#23596249)
> Half these problems would go away if USB and Bluetooth were like Wifi/Ethernet. Just a packet level protocol.
Every few years I have this thought:
If, instead of <X> on <Y>, we had just put more effort into Ethernet (and just Ethernet), we'd probably have reached <Z> by now.
Fiber Channel. USB. Thunderbolt. HDMI/DVI. SCSI/SATA. Bluetooth. BLE. Make wifi be ethernet over radio not the monster it is today.
Of the above, only Ethernet has the good grace to be driven by (relatively) simple software. It's also the only one that isn't getting obsoleted by the next complex thing coming along.
One pain in the ass thing I had to do was write a driver to support talking to MODBUS devices. MODBUS is a 40 year old register based protocol. It's not going away. Most all thr other mixed protocols of it's vintage are long long long dead.
General peeve engineers hide this stuff from the user because they think they won't know what to do with it, it'll just confuse them, or it's ugly. My experience is this is completely wrong.
Also I think a problem with USB and Bluetooth is mixing up the device profiles with the communication protocol. That's always a bad idea yet people keep doing it. Half these problems would go away if USB and Bluetooth were like Wifi/Ethernet. Just a packet level protocol.
Also making Bluetooth a low power/datarate frequency hopper was a terrible mistake. The people responsible should have spent the rest of their lives shoveling hot asphalt.