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Mesh Networking Comes To Bluetooth, Which Could Set Off a New Wave of Smart Buildings (geekwire.com)
One of the most widely used technologies in mobile computing is getting an important upgrade that could accelerate the development of the smart home and industrial internet. From a report: The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the Kirkland, Wash.-based group that enforces compatibility among the billions of devices that use the short-range Bluetooth wireless technology, plans to announce Tuesday that the standard now supports mesh networking. Mesh networks connect a variety of access points and devices across a distributed network, rather than the one-to-one connection that currently exists between your smartphone and that headset that makes you look ridiculous. This approach dramatically improves the range and reliability of a wireless network, since information can be relayed across several different devices rather than having to stretch between two far-apart devices. And if part of the network goes offline, mesh technology has the capability to route around that outage and still carry out its original mission. Wi-Fi networks have also been getting in on this mesh networking act, which has an additional bonus: mesh networks are much easier to set up than traditional wireless networks.
When I worked at Cisco in 2013, we were testing IP phones on the wireless network. One neat feature was to start a call on the fourth floor, take the elevator down, and go out into the parking lot without ever losing the connection. Never mind that a half-dozen access points seamlessly handled the call, including one AP inside the elevator and an AP in the parking lot.