The availability and adoption of a wide range of mobile computing devices (e.g., laptops, personal digital assistants (PDA
s), wearable computers) of varying sizes and processing capabilities, along with the emergence of wireless local‐area networks (WLAN
s) and wireless personal‐area networks (WPAN
s), are enabling the ubiquitous access of information anywhere, anytime. These networks are frequently being used as extensions to the Internet, and end users are increasingly exploiting them to access wireless Internet services. One of the emerging short‐range wireless networking technologies that shows great promise as an enabling technology in the deployment of WPAN
s is the recent industry‐standard Bluetooth. In this article, we explore by design, implementation, and experimental performance evaluation, mechanisms and approaches that enable Bluetooth devices to achieve (1) seamless IP
connectivity to external IP
‐based networks, (2) high performance even in the presence of IEEE
802.11 interfering traffic, and (3) efficient support for high‐quality audio by exploiting the Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol (AVDTP
). We anticipate that our reported experiences and practical results will benefit network designers, developers, and users of Bluetooth technology in WPAN
environments.