Wireless Networks That Build Themselves

ScienceDaily has an interesting article that looks at ad-hoc wireless networks and how they might be even more useful on a large scale. The RUNES project is featured as an example of software projects that might be able to make mobile devices that form self-organizing wireless networks to help promote this goal. "RUNES set out to create middleware: software that bridges the gap between the operating systems used by the mobile sensor nodes, and high-level applications that make use of data from the sensors. RUNES middleware is modular and flexible, allowing programmers to create applications without having to know much about the detailed working of the network devices supplying the data. This also makes it easy to incorporate new kinds of mobile device, and to re-use applications."

Re:Responsibility

[Brian Gordon]

What happens when they start getting included in major routing tables and when a backbone goes down, a lot of data's going to start moving through people's devices.. just think of slashdot, no secure login..

Re:Responsibility

[SatanicPuppy]

Nothing. Common carrier.

The day when this becomes real will be the day that traditional ISPs die. The only way to reliably monitor the traffic will be some kind of "seeding" where the monitor-er will put out relays that monitor the traffic that passes across them.

I think this is really possible in the long run, but in the short run I don't think most things have sufficient computing or broadcast power to make it a reality. Cool that they're working on it though.

Recipe for Cash

[uberhobo_one]

Step 1: Set up a node(s) at the very edge of a mesh network. Step 2: Install software to execute a man in the middle attack. Step 3: Wait for someone to connect to you alone. Step 4: Wait for that someone to connect to their bank. Step 5: Drain their account. It'll take some clever protocols to prevent abuse if this ever gets used as a standard consumer network protocol, but it should do wonders for emergency services.

ISP-less internet topology

[Prysorra]

The internet was designed to route around bottlenecks and network damage. ISP control is a type of bottleneck regardless of the amount of bandwidth.

Thus a natural progression to further decentralization is exactly what is happening. Expect to see ISP trying to pressure legislators to ban this kind of technology, and spreading FUD about.