Is the amount of connections limited by spec, chip or stack?

[Juno]

I would like to know whether the amount of connections for BLE is limited by BLE spec, chip or stack (soft device)?

Also, same question regarding the possibility of the central to perform scanning while being connected to one or more peripherals. Is this limited/defined by BLE spec, chip or stack (soft device)?

If the central reached the max. amount of connections: Is it still possible to scan for advertising peripherals even if no new connection can be established?

Thanks a lot!

[Anders Strand]

Hello.

On our BLE devices, the stack (softdevice) is the limiting factor for number of connections. The limits in the stack are linked to the amount of memory and flash, so one could argue that the chip is the limiting factor, albeit indirectly :)

The softdevice (stack) is also the limiting factor when is comes to concurrently filling many BLE roles (peripheral,central, observer,scanner).

Our S130 softdevice is able to have a maximum amount of connections, while both scanning and advertising. All these activities use the radio, so the internal scheduling will split the time between them. A scanner running concurrently with 8 connections, will not be able to scan 100% of the time, but rather in the time in between the connection events.