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Networking Communications Technology

Swedish Company Trials Peer-to-Peer Cellphones 128

Posted by Zonk from the we-can-hear-everybody-now dept.
Dr_Barnowl writes "A company named TerraNet is going through a trial period for a p2p based mobile telephony system. Phones are used to route calls onto other phones, constructing mesh networks of 'up to 20km'. The BBC reports on the natural tendency of the big telecoms providers to want to squash this. I can see other problems though. The advantages in an environment with sparse cell coverage are obvious, but network effects mean that the number of connections in a heavily populated mesh grow exponentially. What happens to your battery life when your phone becomes a node? And while the company is optimistic that they have a viable technology model from IP licensing, the demand for devices supporting this is going to be proportional to the number of devices that it can connect you to."
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Swedish Company Trials Peer-to-Peer Cellphones More

Swedish Company Trials Peer-to-Peer Cellphones

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  • Privacy Concerns Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Crazy Taco ( 1083423 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:03PM (#20556499)
    This brings to mind some major privacy concerns too. Who besides me doesn't want my conversation getting routed through someone else's phone?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cromar ( 1103585 )
      Just throw some DRM in them suckers.

      • Uh, no. You're thinking of plain old encryption, not DRM -- "DRM" refers specifically to the situation where the intended recipient and attacker are the same person, which is not the case here. Also, normal encryption works fine; it's only DRM that's mathematically-impossible snakeoil.

    • Re:Privacy Concerns Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:28PM (#20557115)
      This brings to mind some major privacy concerns too. Who besides me doesn't want my conversation getting routed through someone else's phone?

      Do you use IRC, Skype, or some type of chat software?

      Maybe say... Internet forums?

      Then your conversations are already being routed through someone else's hardware. You can always use encryption though in all cases.

    • Re:Privacy Concerns Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Neil Watson ( 60859 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:28PM (#20557137) Homepage
      The phone call is already going through the air for anyone one with the will and know-how to intercept.
      • While GSM has ENCRYPTION it is rarely ENABLED, they use the GSM ENCODING as way to keep it "private" usually on mobile networks due to the cost (processing power) of the encryption, and the fact governments dont want it used and the fact that they can charge more for this service.
    • What on earth makes you think other people would want to listen to your phone conversations? Do you hold nuclear security codes? I guess credit card numbers are a concern but perhaps you could turn off the mesh feature when making calls which relay important info.

      • Re:Do you hold nuclear security codes? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by apparently ( 756613 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:43PM (#20557407)
        What on earth makes you think other people would want to listen to your phone conversations?

        Gee, I dunno, most people's internet traffic is pretty fucking boring, but it doesn't stop the script kiddies from firing up their favorite wireless sniffer and eavesdropping. Why ever would I be concerned about someone eavesdropping on a phone call? Is that seriously the most sound "counterargument" you could come up with?

        • OK then, why would you care? Aside from the credit card number thing, I couldn't care less if people listen to my phone conversations. And, like I said, perhaps the mesh feature could be turned off in times when you need enhanced security.
          • So you won't care if people read you email?

            Next time, don't complain about the government not respecting your privacy.
            • I do care about having the option of complete privacy, but 99.9% of the time I don't really care at all. My phone conversations would be pretty boring to strangers. If it were socially acceptable would you listen to the phone conversations of strangers? More then a few times out of curiosity? I am guessing that for most people the answer is no.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by apparently ( 756613 )
            Why would I care? Because my private matters, whether it be a credit card number, the status of an illness, or the fact that my house will be vacant while I'm on vacation, are none of anyone's business?
            What about when I receive a call? How do I know if the conversation is going to turn from mundane to private?
            • Fair enough. For me, unless were talking about financial information, I don't really care at all. I can't imagine anyone being interested. If they were I'd be flattered in a way.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Lesrahpem ( 687242 )
          You can sniff cell phone calls using little more than a HAM radio. This technology doesn't make it any easier or harder. In fact, I don't think this way of routing calls has any security/privacy implications which aren't already an issue with normal cellphone call routing, with the exception that this method makes it harder to eavesdrop on a specific phone call, since the calls don't go through any central point.

      • What on earth makes you think other people would want to listen to your phone conversations?

        I don't know, some pervert might have been interested in the details of my daughters' school schedules, the routes walked home from the ones not far enough away to justify buses, or the locations of the bus stops for those that do. (They're adults now.) Maybe someone would want to know the exact dates that I'd be out of town on business (and therefore not able to personally defend my family). If The Bride of Monster

    • This brings to mind some major privacy concerns too

      It's good that it brings those concerns to mind. Just remember that it didn't create those concerns. Your conversations were already insecure.

      Nothing is ever going to happen -- phone calls routed through your worst enemy, government listening to every single conversation without a warrant, Qeng Ho traders lurking at L1 checking out how much alien Viagra our planets needs, or p2p telecom systems -- which makes things worse. We already have this problem

    • I'm pretty sure this system could be much more secure than the current system. We've seen time and time again that decentralized systems by nature are much harder to monitor than centralized ones. Phone calls could be routed through many phones, and calls could be encrypted. This is how the Internet works, this is how many of our beloved file-sharing systems work. I believe this is the future of telephony, and could be integrated with Wi-Fi to decrease the burden on individual handsets and increase range by
    • "Who besides me doesn't want my conversation getting routed through someone else's phone"

      Your cell phone already broadcasts the conversation through the air.
    • Better than being routed through a CIA/NSA/DoD listening post.

      That, or just use tinfoil.

  • If your phone is a node how easy would it be to listen in on conversations compared to how the phone systems currently work?

    • Re:And... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:11PM (#20556727)
      > If your phone is a node how easy would it be to listen in on conversations compared to how the phone systems currently work?

      Probably a lot easier for another node to listen in. Probably a lot harder for the Government to listen in, until they write some tracking software.

      Unfortunately for anyone building a P2P wireless mesh network, the way you solve the first problem (casual eavesdroppers) involves crypto of sufficient strength to make government eavesdropping impractical.

      We're therefore presented with a technology that's in the interest of the consumer, but counter to the interests of the telcos and the government. No P2P wireless mesh networks will be permitted to proliferate.

    • "If your phone is a node how easy would it be to listen in on conversations compared to how the phone systems currently work?"

      It may be harder to listen in because second by second your phone could be switching the path it is using through the network.

      Encrytion would solve the entire problem for all types of phone networks

  • Not exponentially (Score:4, Informative)

    by f97tosc ( 578893 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:04PM (#20556527)

    ... but network effects mean that the number of connections in a heavily populated mesh grow exponentially.
    No, quadratically with the number of phones.
    • Also, given random connection pairs, and uniform distribution in some 2d area, one can show the capacity across a line bisecting the area is more or less proportional to 1/sqrt(n). This is probably pretty realistic, unfortunately.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rxmd ( 205533 )

      ... but network effects mean that the number of connections in a heavily populated mesh grow exponentially.

      No, quadratically with the number of phones.

      Assuming that most connections are between two phones, and that while a connection is open the participating phones mostly don't phone any other phones, in a real-world situation the bounds are even lower. Assuming only 1:1 connections, the worst case would be a topology with all phones in a row, one in the middle, and everybody on the left calling someon

    • I always admire the correct use of the word "exponentially". I took the article summary literally and wondered what sort of insane connections these phones were using.
  • The problem is that the phones need to connect to a base station in order for the service providers to calculate how much usage you've sucked up. If you were able to make calls from one phone to another without getting routed through the existing cell network, you'd be able to make calls for free, in essence.

    As long as you have strict management of radio frequencies, these phones will never become available to the public.
    • PTT phones are already available. These provide simple point to point comms between handsets - walkie talkie mode. The Mesh is the logical next step.
      • PTT Phones (Nextel is best example) do use the network. Even if you PTT someone next to you, the actual "call" goes from your phone to tower, then tower to phone. If phones are not on the same tower, it goes phone -wireless-> Tower -copper-> Tower -wireless-> phone.

        For the ones offering "off network" PTT use FRS frequencies for communication so range is limited to other headsets within 1 mile or so. (Depending on conditions)

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Radio_Service [wikipedia.org]

    • If you were able to make calls from one phone to another without getting routed through the existing cell network, you'd be able to make calls for free, in essence.

      With many providers, mobile-to-mobile calls within the same network are free. This provider would presumably still be able to track things once they connect through the telco to the outside world, and that's what would need tracking.

      If I'm right (which happens occasionally) this would bring us to another point.. how long before someone hacks out how to become a member of this "mesh" without having to leave it, and therefore get charged? This has the pontential to be huge, and the decentralized aspect ma

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by redcane ( 604255 )
        Whilst with many providers calls to mobiles with the same provider are free, this system makes them always fee. I'm also pretty sure you don't need to hack out to get on the mesh, and not make paid calls, you just don't put any credit on your pre-paid phone.

    • If you were able to make calls from one phone to another without getting routed through the existing cell network, you'd be able to make calls for free, in essence.

      So what's the problem? The telco wouldn't be able to meter because they're not using the network, but the telco also shouldn't meter for exactly the same reason! If the call isn't using any of the telco's resources, it should be "free!"

      In other words, this sounds like a perfectly great idea to me, and much more in line with how the airwaves, be

  • I can't even begin to think about how stupid an idea this is. Just imagine the police deploying a thousand mobile phones across a city to trace every single call.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by toQDuj ( 806112 )
      and yet, you use the internet..

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Encryption.
    • As opposed to, say, intercepting those calls at the base station? This seems to be a way to avoid these eavesdropping posts, or at least stop the governments and telcos monopolising them.

  • What happens to battery life: (Score:5, Funny)

    by GroeFaZ ( 850443 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:10PM (#20556691)
    Obviously the battery will be drained to zero in the blink of an eye, possibly dieing a violent, flaming death if enough energy was stored the moment you switched on the phone. Thankfully, your investigative question posed in TFS alerted their engineers to the problem so they can start working around this problem. Then again, maybe they were already aware of the problem and resorted to the wonderful method of self-regulating systems. The more cell phones burn up, the less dense the network will be. A beatiful design indeed.
    • To 'the all reading professional': (as described by the patent regulations). I hereby make publicly available, as prior art, the following technology

      TITLE: Method, system and device for improving the energy efficiency within p2p cellular phone systems PROBLEM: In p2p cellular phone systems the limited energy storage capacity within cellular phone batteries can limit the usefulness of such systems system. If the cellular phone users allow their cellular phones to be used in transmitting other users cell
  • With every text message being based on text messages sent by other users, here is your average p2p text message:

    lol omg wtf roflmao bff jill bff jill bff jill

    It's an effective way to make sure your messages are completely devoid of any content.

  • Mesh network thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:12PM (#20556761) Homepage Journal
    I've been studying mesh networks, including Internet-based ones such as peercast networks, for quite some time. A few things to consider:

    1. The strength of nodes you can connect to should be based on their strength versus others. Strength should be rated by uplink connection speed (is one node connected to the web versus other nodes connected only to other nodes?), power availability (is one node connected to a power supply verses a battery?), recent packet loss history and recent downtime history.

    2. Node saturation: if a node with a lower network latency oversaturated? Connect to a less saturated, higher latency node.

    3. Data needs: are you sending voice/video or data? Real-time connections should take precedence over data, of course.

    The problem is way more complicated than it seems. For me, a perfect mesh/peercast network would allow data to navigate based on need as well as navigate to those who are the strongest nodes. Do current mesh networks consider these ideas? As far as I know, many of them don't.
    • a couple decades ago there was a lot of DARPA research into autonomous routing and re-configuration in support of then-called 'packet radio' networks.

      It doesn't seem like much more than VoIP over a ham packet radio network, only without having to be a geek to use it :-)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dada21 ( 163177 )
        I'm not familiar with DARPA's research, but I've read quite a few independent research studies on the topic over a decade or more.

        For me, the research is based on the idea of open bandwidth (unlicensed, low government regulation if any) to move towards software radios that can hop frequencies based on sending-power/frequency harmony, power-supply availability, bandwidth-needs, latency-needs and nearby mesh-capability.

        I'm known here as the anti-FCC guy, because my decade+ of study has led me to believe that
      • yep -ricochet did this in the late 90s:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(internet_service) [wikipedia.org]

        it was an idea that was slightly ahead of its time, plus they were a victim of the rise in broadband and the .com crash

        so maybe this new implementation will succeed if it is able to gain critical mass -the idea of the handsets extending the mesh by acting as repeaters is cool...Ricochet never got faster than 128kbps, but that is all the fast that my ATT EDGE connection will go.....

        -I'm just sayin'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      It gets really messy once you get past the network problems.
      How do start with a useful quality of service? You will need x phones distributed over a given area?
      How do you deal with Christmas day and or Mothers day when every body is calling?
      This would really be the pits in sparsely populated areas because you could never be sure that the mesh has enough nodes to be functional.
      In heavily populated areas it is probably cheaper to put in small towers and use the microwave links and or fiber that is already the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by redcane ( 604255 )
        It is designed for times when you know you are within range of someone directly from your phone, but one or the other is out of cell phone range. i.e. combining a walkie talkie and a mobile into the same device.
  • I'd sure like to be part of that trial. I wonder about the stability of the mesh, and bandwidth shaping when certain handsets become the single links between separate larger meshes. Call setup and teardown is interesting, how do you capture the billable minutes, or do you instead have to buy a flat rate plan.

    And then of course, we won't be seeing it state side: CALEA [calea.org] support would likely be impossible.

    • You already have PTT mode Stateside. A mesh is just a more complicated version of the same thing.
      • IIRC, iDEN PTT works through the BSS, which is both the very antithesis of a mesh, and an easy entry point for CALEA.

        Or am I missing something?

    • Yes, the stability of the mesh is important.

      But, it doesn' have to comepte with land lines (which ARE stable)... as much as it has to compete with regular wireless services (which ARE NOT STABLE).

      Most of the discussion about reliablity makes it seem as though the existing wireless services are "all-that". ...They are not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by redcane ( 604255 )
      There are no billable minutes, since your not using the cell phone networks infrastructure, in the same way you are not billed for using your walkie-talkie.

  • countdown to filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rucs_hack ( 784150 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:14PM (#20556813)
    I'd give it a year after this implemented and people will be routinely sharing music over this system.

    Then there will be uproar from the music police, and they will insist on such draconian anti piracy measures that the technology will become all but unusable.

    Or am I being pessimistic.

  • Power to the masses V0.1? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dysplay ( 1026828 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:16PM (#20556841)
    Concerning the author's comment on battery life, could one potentially recycle an old phone to act as a node in this network? Seems many of us get a new one every few years anyway.

    If you can find a way to add privacy, then this could be a great way to return power to consumers and stick it to the man. Or at least have some leverage in convincing major companies to act more consume-friendly. I for one want to see lower prices and the end of the long-distance tax we have now.
    • One could even imagine a completely separate node product, that would be lacking in features and mobility, but would run from grid power and would have much better range. This could be used by citizen organizations to improve coverage in some places, or maybe for households that want to improve coverage in their own neighborhood. It wouldn't even necessarily cost more than the mobile phone version.
      • Hmmm even as it is, why couldn't a cell phone company do just that, sell cheap antennas that relay to bigger antennas? Make them sensitive to signal so they shutdown if the signal is too loud but otherwise for say a few bucks you can buy a repeater that would strenghten your signal out to the more remote antennas. FCC probably has an issue with this I take it....
      • This is what I thought Apple would do when the first iPhone rumours surfaced. Sell an 802.11n device that ran iChat, allowing voice and video calls to existing iChat users and other iPhone users for free anywhere where there was network coverage, and make (more) money by running a VoIP to POTS gateway service. The handset would be bundled with a base station, which would recognise iPhones, and allow route their traffic directly to the Internet (probably with some QoS rules to prevent them from stealing al
  • It wants its party line technology back.

    My grandparents in rural Kansas had party lines, but that's because they were in a remote area. How exactly is this going to add value to the cellular phone?
    • Ah, but if Joe wants to call Sandy, but there isn't a party line between Joe's and Sandy's parties, Joe had to call Irma's place and get her to call Fred to pass the message on to Sandy. With this system, not only does the phone automatically call Irma when Joe dials Sandy's number, but Fred can mimic Joe's voice perfectly, and Irma sounds just like Sandy. And best of all, neither Irma nor Fred remember the conversation afterwards because it consists entirely of in-jokes between Joe and Sandy.

  • What happens to your battery life when your phone becomes a node?

    Other than the unpredictable reliability of mesh density required to get service, that battery cost is a certain problem.

    But if their routing protocol includes battery costs, so battery wear across the whole network is evened, then that problem could be alleviated. It might even offer a way for people to be compensated for contributing to the network, perhaps just by keeping their phone recharged. Getting power to the towers is probably the bi

    • I knocked this one around with a colleague a bit after posting. We thought that an old phone plugged into its charger permanently would make an excellent local node, with your phone only configured to peer with it.

      The protocol could make allowances for battery levels (as pointed out elsewhere on the thread), and if you were plugged in you should be fair game.

      I also thought that it would make a great, cheap, ad-hoc communications node for expeditions into areas with no coverage. Even if you can't persuade so

    • Other than the unpredictable reliability of mesh density required to get service, that battery cost is a certain problem.

      My vision of mesh networks was never so much with the mobile phone system (although they're a good test bed given their ubiquity and feature set) but more like a bunch of wireless routers. With most homes nowadays having internet access and many homes having wireless home networks, it should be easy enough to build a mesh network using these that would eventually replace the internet for local connections. Eventually I'd guess such meshes would share a high-bandwidth pipe, essentially forming their own com

  • I would like to see a p2p wifi network, but not neccessarily on portable phones first, but instead on home computers. You'd think that scenario would be easier to create, maintain, and depend upon, but I guess the demand isn't there yet. I'm thinking the driver for such a change might come from a lack of net neutrality, where people are not only throttled in their communications, but cut off entirely.
    • Yes I've thought about that but you wouldn't be able to have a huge network like the internet. To access information on a computer 100 km away your ping would be much higher than what you currently get. Also some people would have aloqwe wifi antennas than others so the network would be as fast as the slowest guy in the network. So the ones with the faster links would be used more but then it would slow down their own connection and eventually the network would still be slow.

      Basically you would have a net

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by rs79 ( 71822 )
      " I would like to see a p2p wifi network, but not neccessarily on portable phones first, but instead on home computers"

      You're late. It was called UUCP.

    • I absolutely agree. Cisco (Linksys) or Belkin could instantly create such a network if they incorporated the functionality into their 802.11abgn routers. Add an anonymous secure networking protocol that throttled usage based on resources (and gave priority to the connection owner.) This is what causes people to close off routers after all (read jackasses who bittorrent all day long on your open connection.)

      If every router was open we'd already have the system in place. Then you could use a Skype phone or si
  • This is a very exciting development. I wonder whether there will be a role for OSS. What would it take to develop "Open Source" hardware powered by OSS to exploit this idea fully?

    I am tired of my cell phone provider myself, mainly because of contracts and hidden fees/costs.

  • GPS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:22PM (#20557001) Homepage
    Put a GPS receiver in each phone, then send location statistics with each call. The company will rapidly discover the optimum positions to place central nodes, reducing the need for phone-based relaying except in fringe areas.

    That and have lots of fun data to send to the NSA...
  • Dr_Barnowl is apparently leaving his scientific method behind when he makes assumptions about whether these things are viable. The "proof is in the pudding," as they say. The final judgment of this cell-mesh is: does it work?
  • I am so sick of everyone one being oh so concerned about identity theft. I want to see some statistics. I am willing to bet the threat is severely overblown like terrorism. It's just something to upset people. Have you ever had your computer hacked into? Or do you only have second hand stories? I think a bigger problem is changing my passwords endlessly. I hate it!
  • How much power would be consumed routing someone elses's calls? I wouldnt want to pick up my phone to dial a call only to realise that Im nearly out of battery simply because my phone was getting drained routing calls during a busy period? I assume they have taken power optimizations into consideration ?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mestar ( 121800 )
      If average call would be routed trough N other phones, then, average battery usage will be N times more than in current non-mash structure. (I'm talking averages here.)

  • What about security? Could someone not create a node with their phone and basically listen in on conversations that are routed through it? Or do they segment the traffic and split it up among multiple peers so that you only get bits and pieces of any one conversation through any one node?
  • Please, oh, please, Apple. Do not put this feature into my iPhone. I already have 20 minutes of battery life as it is.
  • In the future every device will be part of a wireless mesh network, both acting as a server and client, make it 802 compliant and you have an awesome platform. There is a chicken and egg problem though, enough users need to have devices in order for the network to work, and most people won't want the device unless there are enough to support a reliable network. Piggy backing onto current cell and wireless networks is the way to solve this, relying on them when you don't have enough nodes to connect to, wh
  • It would be first huge network using new architecture. They would control every nodes in the network, at least on production level, so they can use network coding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_coding [wikipedia.org]

  • To everyone worried about privacy (Score:4, Funny)

    by allthingscode ( 642676 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @01:26PM (#20558517)
    We're talking about cell phones. You're out in public talking with 100 people around you and you're worried about privacy?!! If you want privacy wait until you get home.
  • Because phones are much closer to each other than telecom towers, and the energy to transmit goes up quadratically with the distance, I think there is no issue of the batteries dying in a blink. However, when you're on the road (driving), you may not be in touch with enough other phones, and the connection may suck.

    Bert
  • The scaling laws relating to battery power cited in the article are off. Power use per capita is driven by packet rate through one's phone times the power required to relay the packet. As density increases, power drops off with a square law while the number of packets per capita doesn't increase linearly, nor even quadratically, let alone exponentially, just because the population density increases. Indeed, given that human interaction is more direct the more dense the population, there is reason to beli
    • I haven't done the numbers but intuitively this makes sense. In fact, your explanation here seems to imply that power use per capita is purely a function of overall network utilisation and as such is independent from the actual population density.

      Of course, this doesn't factor in that currently, phone traffic is minimized because bandwidth is expensive. A peer to peer system will suffer from tragedy of the commons to some degree, as people show less restraint due to the system being 'free'.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Baldrson ( 78598 ) *
        Presumably there will be hard encryption within the mesh so there could be some form of accounting for who was routing the most packets, with corresponding compensation.

  • A hybrid solution might be best (Score:3, Interesting)

    by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @03:13PM (#20560649)
    One of the problems with wireless grid networks is the latency involved. Having towers makes for much lower latency. The idea of a call being routed 100km over a grid where the nodes have a max range of 1km is crazy. That's a couple of hundred possible points of failure. The quality just won't be acceptable.

    But what about keeping the towers and just using a grid to connect the nodes that are a little out of range. Now that calls just have to traverse the grid to get to the nearest tower. Potential for error is greatly reduced along with latency.

    Areas with an existing infrastructure would benefit even though there is already full coverage. When one has a poor connection (say, in a basement building) the phone could opt to use the grid to get the message out and to the tower. Overall quality of service would increase.

    Areas without an infrastructure would benefit by requiring fewer towers. The more towers the better the quality of service - but for many areas just getting service is the main concern. In such areas only minimal infrastructure would be required. Additional infrastructure could be added in the future should they want to increase the quality of service.

    In addition, localization (ie, 911) and content monitoring are only minimally effected by such a system. Believe it or not, this is actually a good thing for most people.

    Just an idea,
    Willy

  • Seems like one obvious use for a system like this would be in emergency response services, where you'd want a phone infrastructure that doesn't depend on any towers being in place. If you had a fleet of these phones to start handing out (or, heck, turning on and dropping in various places to act as nodes) after something like a Katrina, you'd be able to coordinate large numbers of responders without having to have the cell network back online first.
  • This is one of the greatest ideas I've heard in a long time. If you've ever been caught in a disaster (like 9/11, for example), you know that right away virtually all land lines and cell phones become unusable because the switching circuits are immediately overloaded. This is due to the centralized model, where the switching systems are designed to handle slightly more than average loads, and can't handle more. By distributing the call network, it would dramatically reduce the bottleneck problem, making
    • Another case where it could be used is subway, where density is high enough to be sure that the network is always connected. Look at the number of 802.11 capable devices which are used in subway : IPhone (and now IPod touch), PSP, DS and smartphones. You can connect all these devices to create a local network where you can share your favorite youtube videos, podcast and blog or simply play video game.

      Clearly this should not be possible using classical GSM or WiFi connections which can not handle the traf
  • If that means sever traffic jam, then this is not going to be allowed to replace the current network.
    • Mesh networks are meant to be better than centralised networks when it comes to scalability. Bandwidth ~ nodes, rather than bandwidth = constant.

  • Correction: p2p *portable* phone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by belg4mit ( 152620 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @09:32PM (#20565849) Homepage
    Cause they ain't exactly cells anymore are they?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MikeyVB ( 787338 )
      You're right, they are not "cell" phones anymore!

      P2P phones...maybe. Doesn't have a nice ring to it though does it? Hmmm, emmy see here. The phones are always moving around through aren't they? Maybe they should be called "mobile" phones. Like they are currently called in Sweden.

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