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

Printable version...

[tcopeland]

...is right here.

um...

[Anonymous Coward]

"but check this summary if your time is limited." - my time is always limited, for I am a mortal man.

Health Implications

[superpulpsicle]

Anyone worry that years from now they'll find out wireless causes cerebral cancer or something? Sad part is you can't run away.

Just like lasik eye surgery or x-rays, all the bad news come after marketing have cashed in. Leaving the scientists, engineers and doctors to pick up the slack.

Newer development in wireless grids

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear some company invented the ultimate in wireless communication. Some kind of conductor cord which can be used to transmit information from point A to point B along a path of your choosing, without interference to any other transmission.

connecting...

[garcia]

Interesting research but I hope that their theories remain just that (at least as far as using CPUs from personal wireless devices).

Yes, plenty of people are using wireless devices, and yes they could be used together to encode a concert or whatever, but no, I wouldn't want to be sharing my devices CPU time without compensation (say that encoding's output for free).

I want devices to be smaller, faster, and use less power. This seems to promote a need for more CPU time and a bigger battery.

Is that a wireless grid device in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Re:connecting...

[Ignignot]

I wouldn't want to be sharing my devices CPU time without compensation

Just because it is possible doesn't mean it will have to be involuntary. Maybe instead you'd be credited small amounts of cpu time from the cell phone company, and at the end of the month see a small reduction in your bill. Maybe if you went around using everyone else's cpu, you'd see a small charge in your bill. But this is somewhat missing the point - think of what it would be like to record a concert from the viewpoint of 100 different people simultaneously, then produce a final recording from that! Or on vacation in Japan, instead of going home with just your photographs of monuments, having all the photos taken at that monument while you were there!

Re:connecting...

[igrp]

I was going to hold off and mod in this thread but there's one point I would like to make instead.

You address a valid point and your attitude is probably shared by many. However, there's also the bigger picture which few people take the time to look at (and I don't mean any single person).

These wireless grid concepts (at least the more sophisticated ones) are basically scalable, distributed computing solutions. They solve a lot of problems but also suffer from some of the problems that all distributed computer networks have.

The more common wireless grid devices become (provided this idea ever takes off) we'll likely see two major changes: on the one hand, efficiency will increase dramatically (more devices = a bigger ressource pool, common protocols, less overhead). And on the other hand, we'll see a change in how we view CE and mobile computing in general. Thing about it: most of the time our PDAs, cell phones, etc. don't actually do anything, but rather just idle.

Those spare CPU cycles could, however, be used by others in the grid which would in turn require their device to be less powerful (since they can depend on the network's CPU power and need to do less computing onboard).

There are three potential big problems I see with this though:

• Battery life. The more our devices actually 'work', the more power they consume. Add the network/radio overhead which generally tends to consume quite a bit of power on top of that and you have a problem. People have to come to accept a certain standard of usability though. So you either need to limit power consumption, and hence cripple a mobile device's effectivity as a grid note or add bigger batteries.
• Manufacturers. They basically won't like this. It takes a less powerful device to accomplish the same task. So why buy a new gizzmo if you can just use some nearby grid node.
• And lastly, sheer economics. For this to work, people would have to see benifits now. Nobody wants to buy a new PDA that has less battery life just to be part of something big if there's no immediate gain. And, due to the fact that you need a whole bunch of grid nodes in order to have a useful network of some sort, that just won't happen.

  "Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."

not a great [scalable] idea

[Anonymous Coward]

wireless presents some issues such as limited bandwidth and high latency over long links or routes. distributed computing requires very low latency and very high bandwidths, and wireless just doesn't seem to me like a solution which will attain the same performance per dollar (unless it's a weird circumstance, like multiple sites separated by many many miles, but even then some kind of frame or T1 might do better than wireless or microwave).

What is the point?

[Sanity]

This sounds like just another attempt to coin a new term. Skimming through the article I don't see any new concepts, nor even new combinations of concepts. Grid computing instead of P2P, now wireless grids, what next - P2P XML?

Re:The Wireless model

[dan_sdot]

Yes, and it would also be nice is there was a keg of Anchor Steam on the every corner with a beautiful woman in a bikini pumping it. These guys need to ground their thinking a little. This isn't the utopia of wireless devices. If someone else was using my wireless device, the it would cost me cpu time, bandwitdth, battery life, etc. I can't afford to pay to make everyone elses experience better. This will not catch on.

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.

Trust and Security

[Keitopsis]

Couple of thoughts:

1) Can we really do authentication for masses of "grid" members without eating up the bandwidth?

2) Is this the next market for spoofing-spam distributors?

The Chinese lottery

[iamdrscience]

This all reminds me of the "chinese lottery" idea. With all these devices connected, there definitely seems to be a possibility that someone could (illegitimately) harnass the power to crack strong cryptography. Especially since, unlike computers, nobody is expecting their Cellphone or whatever to get hacked. Also unlike a similar scenario with computers on the internet, there could potentially be far far more devices on a network like this.

For those unfamiliar with the idea of a Chinese Lottery, there was a paper written proposing that consumer products could be used as a method of distributed computing. The example used in the paper was that the Chinese government could equip its radios with low-power computing systems and broadcast the data they need processed. The owner of whichever radio finally cracked the key would be rewarded (like a lottery). This was just an example of the idea by the way, it wasn't proposed as a real threat.

Re:The Wireless model

[towerdave]

To boil down what sean23007 said, it's internet Communism. Due to human nature, it won't work, unless the system can't be changed to block sharing of resources. There will always be a few that will share, but many more that will leech. TowerDave

Re:The Wireless model

[putch]

while i do agree that for the forseeable future this is fantasy it is an exciting idea.

30-40 years ago the concept of a personal computer would have evoked a similar response. let alone some kind of "invisible global network" that people could access with computers carried in their pockets.

this could work if and when mobile cpus have enough power (both computing and electrical) and, i would imagine, that much of this "grid" would be stationary Access Points (or perhaps they'd be more like relay stations).

but yes, this probably isn't going to catch on anytime soon.

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).

Re:The Wireless model

[Kristoph]

You could design the grid "participant" software such that it would only use the idle resources of your device.

So your network bandwidth and CPU resources would be 100% yours when you needed them but when your device was partially or fully idle the resources of your device would be made availlable to other users and devices.

Personally, security issues not withstanding, I would have no problem with someone making use of my idle resources as long as when I needed them they would be availlable to me instantly.

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Don't do it, it's a conspiracy!

[Chairboy]

These types of grids are part of a conspiracy by the battery companies to generate more sales.

Data:
1. A portable device that's part of a mesh or grid will participate in data transfer for other devices.
2. A portable device in said condition is consuming more power then a device that is waiting patiently for user input or a signal targeted for it.
3. As a result of items #1 and #2, the batteries are drained much faster and more often.
4. Each charge cycle shortens the length of your device.

Conclusion: You will need to buy more replacement batteries.

Somewhere in Vegas, the Energizer bunny is doing lines of Cocaine off the breasts of a dancer while Duracell the kangaroo (or whatever) is dancing behind him.

Fight the (battery) power!