DARPA Wants Huge Holy Grail of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks 61
coondoggie writes "Even the often far-reaching researchers at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) seems to think this one is a stretch: Develop what's known as mobile ad-hoc wireless technology that lets 1000-5000 nodes connect simultaneously and securely in the field. For the past 20 years, researchers have unsuccessfully used Internet-based concepts in attempts to significantly scale mobile ad hoc networks, DARPA said. A constraint with current examples is they can only scale to around 50 nodes before network services become ineffective."
This problem is more or less solved already (Score:5, Informative)
This problem is more or less solved already. It can be done through ad hoc mesh networking, and there is firmware that can be used on Atheros and several other vendors chips.
The problem with deploying any of this is that the ability to do this with civilian devices disintermediates the cell phone user from the cell network providers. So there are huge buckets of money which Do No Want This Firmware Available Anywhere. Deploy it, and you mostly do not need cellular carriers, unless you need lower-than-voice-acceptable latency on your network for higher speed data (e.g. multiplayer video games).
The half a dozen companies that can already do this include Google; I used to sit about 200 feet from the office of the primary researcher.
Re:802.11S (Score:4, Informative)
They could just use Android phones with the Serval Project mesh network [servalproject.org] app installed on them.