Connecting Devices With Wireless Grids

Roland Piquepaille writes "A new concept is emerging in networking: wireless grids. These grids connect all kinds of wireless devices, such as sensors or cell phones, with each other and with more traditional wired grids. IEEE Internet Computing has devoted a very long and thorough article about these wireless grids which can deliver new resources, locations of use, and institutional ownership and control patterns for grid computing via ad hoc distributed resource sharing." (Read more below.)

"The article says that applications for wireless grids fall into three classes: the ones which aggregate information from the range of input/output interfaces found in nomadic devices, those which focus on the locations and contexts in which the devices exist, and those that leverage the mesh network capabilities of collections of nomadic devices. The authors add that these grids "emerged from a combination of the proliferation of new spectrum market business models, innovative technologies deployed in diverse wireless networks, and three related computing paradigms: grid computing, P2P computing, and Web services." If you're interested in the future of wireless networks, the original article is a must-read, but check this summary if your time is limited."

Comments

Re:The Wireless model

[sean23007]

Hmm. You seem to think that in this situation your handheld would be serving everyone else around you, and all of them are just leeching, and you don't get any service from anywhere, it all originates with you. Well, I should probably point out to you that that's not really how sharing models work. When you're not using your resources, they are shared among your peers who might need them. When you are using resources, if you need more than your machine possesses, your peers share with you. And the wireless grid network spreads across all the devices. You are just a link in the chain. Not the start of the chain. Everyone is not leeching off you. And you aren't paying to make everyone else's experience better. Everyone is paying. And everyone gets more than they would if they were going it alone. That's the point.

Am I just being dense, or...?

[Deep Fried Geekboy]

...isn't this a very long-winded way of saying 'the internet will soon have a substantial wireless component'?

I can't see what's new here at all. Yes, there will have to be a few more technologies for managing ad-hoc networks. But that's about it.

As for us all sharing our resources in one warm fuzzy anarcho-syndicalist wireless IT hive, dream on. (Or, more precisely, give T-Mobile your first-born).