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List:       kismet-wireless
Subject:    FCC Presentation on Wireless Ad Hoc Mesh Network Technology
From:       Porkchop <porkchop () nic ! com>
Date:       2002-05-30 22:15:40
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The talk was not too bad. I'm used to "high-level-hand-wavy" (as we 
call it here) talks, and this was somewhat better than that.

Check it out:
http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/mt052902.ram

The intro starts about 4 and a half minutes in, so unless you like 
classical music, just fast forward in. The talk starts at about 6 
minutes, and runs for a little under an hour followed by a half hour 
of questions.

He isn't there to talk about Ad Hoc as we know it (802.11 wise). He's 
talking about mesh networks generated in an Ad Hoc style. (Ad Hoc == 
1. "Improvised and often impromptu." 2. "For the specific purpose, 
case, or situation at hand.")

Mesh networking, ya'll may know, is kind of like Spanning Tree 
Protocol on speed, steroids, and prozac all at the same time.

Say you have a PDA. You want to get online with it from downtown. 
Generally, you would have to talk to a cell site far away with lots 
of power. With "mesh" networking, you can talk at a lower power to 
someone halfway between you and the cell site instead of directly to 
it. The results are: a) fewer people "hear" your traffic, leaving the 
radio waves clear for those others to use, b) you would be able to 
talk to the cell site far away at 500kbps, but the guy halfway 
between you can talk to both of you at 1mbps, so you get 1mbps 
service, and c) as the mesh gets more populated, more paths generate, 
increasing not only the size of the network, but its redundancy and 
capacity.

Most of the questions were good ones, with a one or two designed to 
make the asker look smart, and one or two downright scary or stupid 
(at least to an idealistic and educationally minded hacker such as 
myself).

There are a lot of implications to this technology (I consider it a 
concept, they call it a technology), plenty of brainfood that can 
keep your head occupied during the long mindless drivel that is our 
mundane and pitiful existence. (oh, sorry, I got distracted.)

This is something I had been thinking of for a long time. Can anyone 
imagine a future where a traceroute from you to your friend down the 
street would look like this:

  1  my-pda (10.10.10.1)  1.311 ms  0.836 ms  0.408 ms
  2  my-fridge (10.0.0.1)  1.579 ms  1.679 ms  1.862 ms
  3  my-car (10.104.80.1)  9.189 ms  9.352 ms  9.769 ms
  4  neighbors-power-meter (214.164.160.42)  11.748 ms  17.397 ms  10.935 ms
  5  neighbors-computer (214.164.160.18)  16.277 ms  14.884 ms  11.39 ms
  6  other-neighbors-computer (156.54.94.6)  20.152 ms  33.488 ms  20.553 ms
  7  other-neighbors-blender (156.54.94.5)  27.306 ms  29.292 ms  22.908 ms
  8  other-neighbors-vibrator (156.54.94.1)  26.105 ms  23.917 ms  27.323 ms
  9  friends-pc (1.241.52.45)  29.673 ms  30.362 ms  49.596 ms

-porkchop
-- 
--------
    My mis-spelling ability knows no bounds, sorry. (umm, yaa, aie cn spel)
Creator: Techie Theatre Funnies OnStage! <http://www.nic.com/~porkchop/>

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