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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."
How long does your battery last now? How long do you think it would last if your phone was a repeater?
No thanks.
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?