Now Get Weather Alerts Even When Your Mobile Networks Are Down, Thanks To IBM's Mesh Networking (cnet.com)

Communicating news of severe weather events or natural disasters is something mobile phones are well suited to, but if there's limited or disrupted network coverage the message may fail to get through. But not anymore. From a CNET report: A new Weather Channel app, though, can get the message through even during earthquakes, tornadoes, and terrorist attacks when mobile networks can be overwhelmed and may not work. The Android app, geared specifically for developing countries, uses IBM-developed technology called mesh networking that sends messages directly from one phone to another. The result is that information can propagate even when centralized networks fail. Using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networks, the app can send data from phone to phone across distances between 200 to 500 feet, IBM Research staff member Nirmit Desai said. It doesn't add any more battery burden than an ordinary app, and the mesh network can be used without having to reconfigure the phone's network settings.

Comments

Re: Not Wi-Fi mesh I guess

[Anonymous Coward]

What about using the scanning mode of the network adapter to transfer small messages? You could theoretically place a small 32 bytes message in th SSID then initiate scanning of nearby ad-hoc stations. That way you don't have to fully associate with a network.

Re:Ad hoc (IBSS) != Wifi-Direct (technical details

[complete loony]

(If you run git blame on serval mesh's source code, you'll find my name on about 80% of the code)

Serval mesh uses Wifi and Bluetooth to share files and communicate securely. But it can't bypass google's removal of IBSS from Android. We've kept the code that turns on IBSS on some Android handsets version 2.3.3 or lower. If you really want a mesh network between phones, you can still get your hand on some old ones...

Android's bluetooth & Wifi-Direct stack are a buggy mess. It's far too easy to stumble over a bug that prevents you from getting any data through. Plus both API's are built around having the user confirm each and every connection. Almost completely useless for building a self organising network.

Then there's Wifi. Sure you can turn most phones into a hotspot... If you use reflection to call a hidden API. The carrier hasn't done anything to disable it. And in some cases, only if you have a functional cellular data service. But there's no easy way to tell if there are other nearby devices waiting to connect to you....

The main problem with this new weather app is that nobody will have it installed when they need it. Getting emergency weather information is not going to motivate people to use this app day to day and form the adhoc networks that are needed for it to work. Also this article and the summary is crap, IBM did not invent mesh networking.