General information
What is a Bluetooth COM port?
Physical communications (COM) ports are used when two serial devices are connected by means of a cable. A Bluetooth COM port, however, is a virtual COM port providing a wireless alternative to a physical one. Bluetooth COM ports make it possible to connect to almost any Bluetooth enabled serial application (legacy application) that would otherwise have been connected using a cable and a physical COM port.
Some profiles require a Bluetooth COM port
As Bluetooth links are wireless, you need no physical COM port to connect to a remote device. However, in connection with some of your local profiles, you need a Bluetooth COM port. This provides an address, so to speak, needed by your legacy application to establish a link to a remote device.
Note: Most users need not worry about Bluetooth COM ports at all; the default settings ensure that you can use all your Local Services without having to make any Bluetooth COM port settings.
The following services are supported by profiles that are associated with a Bluetooth COM port:
- DUN (Dial-up Networking Profile)
- FAX (Fax Profile)
- LAN (LAN Access Profile)
- Default business card (OBEX Object Push)
- File transfer (OBEX File Transfer)
Furthermore, the Serial Port Profile is used in connection with Bluetooth COM ports.
Except for the Serial Port Profile, the above-mentioned profiles are associated with the Bluetooth COM ports 7, 8, and 9 by default. You can change these settings, if you like. For more information, see the section “Bluetooth COM port settings”.
New Bluetooth COM ports and interoperability
Some users may want to add one or more additional Bluetooth COM ports to the computer. This is necessary if you want to make use of the Serial Port Profile, for instance to use a serial application like HyperTerminal to transfer data between two Bluetooth enabled computers.
The same profile must be associated with the local Bluetooth COM port and the remote one you want to connect to. Therefore, before you can establish a serial Bluetooth COM port link to a remote device, you must associate the Serial Port Profile with a Bluetooth COM port, and then add the Bluetooth COM port to your computer. For link establishment to be possible, the remote device must have a Bluetooth COM port with the Serial Port associated with it, too.
In “Bluetooth COM port settings” we will look into how you can add and remove Bluetooth COM ports, and change the settings concerning which profiles are associated with which Bluetooth COM ports.