Raspberry Pi Forums

Basically what the title says. I know that the 4 USB ports and the Ethernet port on the RPi go over the same chip and essentially share bandwidth. I'd like to know if the Wifi and Bluetooth are also going over the same chip or if they are completely separate from the USB and Ethernet.

Thanks!

SirKahn wrote:Basically what the title says. I know that the 4 USB ports and the Ethernet port on the RPi go over the same chip and essentially share bandwidth. I'd like to know if the Wifi and Bluetooth are also going over the same chip or if they are completely separate from the USB and Ethernet.

They are completely separate.

The Wifi uses a SDIO interface and Bluetooth uses a UART.

rpdom wrote: They are completely separate.

The Wifi uses a SDIO interface and Bluetooth uses a UART.

So not only are the Wifi and Bluetooth separate from the USB and Ethernet but they are also entirely independent of each other as well?

SirKahn wrote:

rpdom wrote: They are completely separate.

The Wifi uses a SDIO interface and Bluetooth uses a UART.

So not only are the Wifi and Bluetooth separate from the USB and Ethernet but they are also entirely independent of each other as well?

Yes. Even though both are in the same chip they use different interfaces.

rpdom wrote:Yes. Even though both are in the same chip they use different interfaces.

Sorry for so many questions, but does that mean that one will not affect the performance of the other? Because from my understanding, using an Ethernet connection while also reading/writing to/from a flash drive will hurt the flash drive read/write performance due to the network traffic passing through the same band, so to speak, as the file transfer traffic. Will doing a Bluetooth file transfer affect the Wifi speeds from the onboard Wifi adapter?

SirKahn wrote:Will doing a Bluetooth file transfer affect the Wifi speeds from the onboard Wifi adapter?

Did it on the Pi2?

SirKahn wrote:

rpdom wrote:Yes. Even though both are in the same chip they use different interfaces.

Sorry for so many questions, but does that mean that one will not affect the performance of the other? Because from my understanding, using an Ethernet connection while also reading/writing to/from a flash drive will hurt the flash drive read/write performance due to the network traffic passing through the same band, so to speak, as the file transfer traffic. Will doing a Bluetooth file transfer affect the Wifi speeds from the onboard Wifi adapter?

As stated above, they are independent, so any bottlenecks will NOT be down to running them at the same time, but more likely SD card bandwidth, or CPU load dealing with everything happening at the same time. However, BT is a very very slow protocol with low bandwidth, so its not going to have any noticeable effect on CPU or SD card.

jamesh wrote:As stated above, they are independent, so any bottlenecks will NOT be down to running them at the same time, but more likely SD card bandwidth, or CPU load dealing with everything happening at the same time. However, BT is a very very slow protocol with low bandwidth, so its not going to have any noticeable effect on CPU or SD card.

Alright, that sounds great! Thanks for all the info you guys!

Hi new here but I keep having the problem of when I am using wifi the Bluetooth gets almost unusable most of the the time wether I am streaming music to the pi or from any advice would be greatly appreciated

Douglas6 wrote:

SirKahn wrote:Will doing a Bluetooth file transfer affect the Wifi speeds from the onboard Wifi adapter?

Did it on the Pi2?

Pi2B doesn't have a WiFi or BT built-in. If you add them to a Pi2B, they'll probably be on the USB bus, unless you wire them to the GPIO pins.

W. H. Heydt wrote:

Douglas6 wrote:

SirKahn wrote:Will doing a Bluetooth file transfer affect the Wifi speeds from the onboard Wifi adapter?

Did it on the Pi2?

Pi2B doesn't have a WiFi or BT built-in. If you add them to a Pi2B, they'll probably be on the USB bus, unless you wire them to the GPIO pins.

Yes, you are correct. I retract my ill-considered response.
In fact, considering the interference between WiFi and Bluetooth on a Pi3, I wouldn't be surprised if a Bluetooth file transfer impeded WiFi comms.