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A Mobile Phone Mesh That Can Survive Carrier Network Failure
bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that researchers from Australia and Singapore are developing a wireless ad-hoc mesh networking technology that uses mobile handsets to share and carry information. The mesh network will make use of Bluetooth or Wi-fi to swap information between handsets — even if the mobile phone network was offline. One potential scenario could be during an emergency where the mobile phone network was unavailable or clogged. In a city centre, users could set up the network to share information, video, photographs and, depending on the final client applications, even locate friends and loved ones. One benefit of developing such a technology would be that users sharing content between their devices would use the wireless communications technology already built into their phones and not bandwidth from their mobile provider. The researchers from the National ICT Australia and Singapore's A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research hope to demonstrate the technology within two years, according to NICTA project leader Dr Roksana Boreli.'This is an early stage in the research project,' she said. 'We are addressing how you would quickly establish trust between devices, how you would discover them and share the information,' Boreli said."
Screw only for emergencies why don't they just put the providers out of business. No more monthly fees.
Trust = Ability to violate established security policy
Don't trust, only verify.
Encrypt information you want to send, then I don't care if 50 drug dealers, pedophiles, Catholic priests, scientologists, or other low-lives are involved in the chain, so long as the message reaches my intended recipient who has the proper key to decrypt it.
I dunno ... about as many as those who "waste" their bandwidth seeding torrents?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
I think this sort of decentralized network is a great idea - it's something we need to see more of, and has tons of uses.
Can you imagine if an application was released that created just such an "off of the network" mesh and would work with most phones and it caught on like Napster did? Can you imagine how the mobile providers would go apeshit if large groups of people circumvented their network and were able to communicate on their own?
Unless you're up against a monthly transfer cap, seeding while you're not otherwise using the network doesn't cost you anything. On the other hand, running the WiFi and Bluetooth radios (and the CPU) may significantly reduce your mobile's battery life, which is already much too short for most people's tastes already.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
One potential scenario could be during an emergency where the mobile phone network was unavailable or clogged. In a city centre, users could set up the network to share information, video, photographs and, depending on the final client applications, even locate friends and loved ones.
The emergency scenario implies extended and widespread power outages. When you battery dies, it dies, and it just might take you with it.
The cell phone designer makes certain simplying assumptions: that you will be well within range of a commercial grade repeater mounted high and with a relatively unobstructed line of sight.
That you aren't trying to hop-scotch your way at street level across midtown Manhatten in a sleet storm.
You are going to need one hell of an algorithym to manage the load if you allow unrestricted traffic in photos and video under 9/11 conditions.
What's needed here most is the ability to send a brief - meanignful - text message.
I thought the bigger practical obstacle was node density? Also, ISPs don't want people to share their Internet connections with unknown numbers of strangers. And people mostly want mobile networking for Internet connectivity, so if you can't guarantee an Internet connection almost 100% of the time, I think a lot of people are not going to be interested in your mesh. That means there's little commercial incentive to develop such a system, and here we are, few meshes around.
To really start a mesh network up, you'd need some high-bandwidth internet connectivity nodes all around a city, and then a bunch of people with mesh-enabled devices. Without both of these the system doesn't really work. And that's kind of the problem with the mesh - it's not worth much without a large userbase, and it's difficult to get a large userbase without a useful product.