Peer-to-Peer Cell Phones?

Mike writes "This Wired article mentions that research firm SRI International has come up with a nifty way to lessen the need for the ugly cell towers that you see popping up everywhere (I love the ones here in Atlanta that are oh-so-cleverly dressed up to look like pine trees). Their PacketHop software would create a sort of peer-to-peer network, utilizing the unused power in phones in the vicinity as miniature relays, with your voice/data hopping from one phone to the next until it reaches a relay tower and its final destination."

Comments

Dangers? What Dangers? I Don't See Any Dangers!

[Myriad]

I fail to see how anything you mentioned is "dangerous" in the slighest! Let's look at this point-by-point:

1. The Obvious: "owning" another cell phone.
And how exactly are you going to do this? Are you logging into the other phones? No. When you access a site on the Internet are you directly connecting to that remote system? Not bloody likely, you're connecting through a whole series of systems. Don't believe me? Try a little app called Traceroute.

Hopping from phone-to-phone-to-tower is not significantly different, in regards to a cracking threat, than the in between systems you access when surfing the net.

2. Radiation becomes a REAL risk, because the main broadcasting would be done by the phones, not the towers.
Uh huh. Really? I don't recall any mention of the phones being goosed to 4 watts - or any increase in power output for that matter. If anything radiation would go DOWN - you only have to reach the nearest phone, not the nearest tower (which odds would suggest is further away from you). Inverse square law dictates a significant drop in output requirements.

4. Spam (another nuisance).
And how is this supposed to work exactly? See my response to point 1. Spam would have to be directly targeted to the phone itself via SMS or text messaging (which does happen now).

5. Viruses.
Again please explain this one. Sounds a whole lot like Point 1 again. You're hopping from phone to phone, not logging into the phone itself. The remote phone is lot running any applications on your behalf.

You're sounding like McAffee with the fearmongering.