Bluetooth 4.2 includes IPv6 support

OK, I'm pretty dumb about Bluetooth so feel free to laugh:

Why does BT know or care about IPv6? It have thought it was a physical layer, like Ethernet, that you could pass IPv4, IPv6, PPP-over-ATM, or whatever thing you wanted to over it. My home network switch doesn't support or not support IPv6. Why would Bluetooth?

I wish they provided enough actual technical details to see what's new here. As far as I'm aware, the usual way to do IP-over-Bluetooth encapsulation is using the Personal Area Networking profile [1], which has required support for IPv6 support since 2001. (I've never tested it on real hardware with anything other than IPv4, so maybe it was specified but never implemented? Regardless, it seems odd that a mechanism that tunnels Ethernet packets would have to care about higher levels of the protocol stack.)

[1]: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/15/Bluetooth/PAN-Profile....

Will this require updated hardware, or is it enough to update the software stack for devices with 4.0 hardware? The FAQ wasn't clear.

(The FAQ did go on for lengths about branding "bluetooth 4.2" vs "bluetooth smart" vs "bluetooth smart ready" vs "bluetooth". Have they learnt nothing from the "HD Ready" silliness? Also it's weird to see that "bluetooth low energy is an optional part of the specification". Sounds like a "fun" spec to implement)

I don't know. I kinda chuckled at the last image on the page. I thought it looked like some sort of mission control for an interstellar space launch, with a random tourist couple in lab coats at the helm, with no clue of what is going on in the screens.

This is awesome. OTOH, I wonder whether 4.3 will then introduce a HW-based firewall approach to the IoT devices running 4.2 ... (which we might have by ... 2028?)

Pardon my hardware ignorance (I'm one of those 'software guys'), but could something like this be used for a close-proximity meshnet?

Imagine when an OpenSSL like bug is found in the firmware in all these IPv6 over BT lightbulbs?