Dummies, Wireless

In This Chapter
Chapter 15
Using a Bluetooth Network
� Delving into Bluetooth
� Enabling cell phone networking with Bluetooth
� Getting Bluetooth on your PDA or PC
� Discovering other Bluetooth devices
� Learning about Bluetooth pairing
Most of the time, when people talk about wireless networks, they’re
talking about wireless local area networks (LANs). LANs, as the name
implies, are local, which means that they don’t cover a wide area (like a town
or a city block). Wide area networks (WANs), like the Internet, do that bigger
job. For the most part, you can think of a LAN as something that’s designed
to cover your entire house (and maybe surrounding areas, such as the
back patio).
Another kind of wireless network is being developed and promoted by wireless
equipment manufacturers. The personal area network (PAN) is designed
to cover just a few yards of space and not a whole house (or office or factory
floor or whatever). PANs are typically designed to connect personal devices
(cell phones, laptop computers, handheld computers, and personal digital
assistants) and also as a technology for connecting peripheral devices to
these personal electronics. For example, you could use a wireless PAN
technology to connect a mouse and a keyboard to your computer without
any cables under the desk for your beagle to trip over.
The difference between LANs and PANs isn’t clear cut. Some devices may be
able to establish network connections by using either LAN or PAN technologies.
The bottom-line distinction between LANs and PANs is this: If something
connects to a computer by a network cable, its wireless connection is usually
a LAN; if it connects by a local cable (such as USB), its wireless connection
is usually a PAN.
In this chapter, we discuss the most prominent wireless PAN technology:
Bluetooth, which we introduce in Chapter 3. The Bluetooth technology has
been in development for years and years. We first wrote about it in our first
edition of Smart Homes For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, Inc.) in 1999. For a