MeshNetworks has developed a revolutionary mobile broadband network architecture based on patented ad hoc peer-to-peer (p2p) routing technology. The result is a self-forming, self-healing wireless mesh where mobile devices become the network.

these guys have been around for a few years; i think their stuff was initally developed for the military...i want to say in israel...?

did you read the 2 recent issues of Wired about the new warfare? seems like the military guys are way out front on dumb decentralized networks (again)
- big jimmy 5-30-2002 7:58 am

not israel, us. but check out this brief bio of one of their board members:

Mathew Bigge is President of MILCOM Venture. Previously, Mr. Bigge served as MILCOM's Chief Financial Officer where he worked with MILCOM and it's affiliate companies on business formation, comprehensive financial planning and investment structuring. While serving as CFO, Mr. Bigge developed MILCOM's financial strategy and created MILCOM's Return on Overhead financial model. Under his leadership, he helped MILCOM and its affiliates raise over two hundred and fifty million dollars in venture funding. Mr. Bigge has extensive expertise working with start up companies and has served as CFO for numerous high tech companies. Prior to working with MILCOM, Mr. Bigge served with distinction as an Infantry Commander and Ranger in the United States Army. During the US intervention in Haiti, he commanded the team that detained and deported Haitian dictator Raul Cedras.


gotta love that last line.
- big jimmy 5-30-2002 8:03 am

i want to see Raul Cedras's bio
- Skinny 5-30-2002 3:17 pm

Down at the pool, sipping a Mai Tai with his old pal Manny Noriega, ready to give Jebby a call
about those pics before heading back to the room for another massive bump. While lighting a
Dutchmaster's Presidential , he gets a beep, why it's old Raul Salinas calling from Dublin, fundraising for the Vatican, could he please please please give him the Lord of the Skies
new number. Everybody has a good laugh hardy har harhar har, a Dominican Republic, now isn't that funny?
- frank 5-30-2002 5:24 pm

Well, I don't know anything about this really, but it probably shouldn't be surprising that the military would be out in front on this. The reason is that this idea will work really well, but it will be hard to control, and thus hard to make money off of it. Sort of sounds like the internet itself.

Why would a for profit company want to make an ad hoc wireless network? They wouldn't. In fact it's probably the last thing they'd want to do. But someone who just wants the best working network (and isn't thinking about maximizing profits) would definitely go this route. So it's one place where military thinking, and the sort of pie in the sky digital utopian thinking I do, actually come together in a sense.

(And yes, I know the military industrial complex wants to make money, but they don't do it in an open market, so it's different. And they don't give a shit about large intellectual property holders which is what's holding everyone else back.)
- jim 5-30-2002 5:58 pm

Maybe you should enlist and, you know, try to change the system from within. I'm pretty sure Uncle Sam wants you. And your little computer, too...cackle, cackle...
- alex 5-30-2002 6:42 pm

what is this technology going to do foe me??
- Skinny 5-30-2002 7:20 pm

You'll be able to be on the internet without having to pay someone like verizon (or inch, or your cable company, etc.) Also, no company will be able to regulate (or shut down) the network, because it won't be flowing over wires owned by a corporation.
- jim 5-30-2002 8:25 pm

It'll be floating betwixt Pringle cans like some electromagnetic Akashic record & all the web will be everywhere available.
- frank 5-30-2002 8:32 pm

We're working on it. Of course some people might claim that this ultimate network (always) already exists and that what us hapless computer types are doing is merely reinventing a lower tech version of what nature already provides to those sufficiently tuned in. In that scenario the process of building it out of digital components would be similar to the process of fully learning (groking) the natural system. (If you can simulate it then you really understand it.)
- jim 5-30-2002 8:38 pm

the military vision, as described in the 2 wired pieces (one was the bruce sterling cover story, the other was on robots), is that you carpet-bomb a battle zone with dumb sensor/network nodes, creating a decentralized information grid (encrypted, of course, but decentralized); then you triangulate that data with satellite info plus data from a few humans (eg rangers with laser rangefinders, that kind of thing), creating a 3-d realtime simulation/view of the battlezone that you can use to nuke the shit out of anything you want to within it (the real battlezone, that is). these are the tactics they've been working out in afghanistan. i don't know whether the dumb sensor infogrid (my terms) has been deployed yet or how well it worked (yet) but, hey, makes sense to me.
- big jimmy 5-31-2002 12:33 am

I read that issue. And it makes sense to me as well. I did find the Sterling piece a little disturbing in it's (pro-US) military-techno fetishization. I hadn't sensed it that strong from him before. But interesting articles nonetheless.

I've been thinking/reading a lot about this, so I'll just dump something out here. Feel free to tune out now.

"Stupid" networks (which aren't really stupid, but do have all their intelligence at the periphery, in software, and not built into the routers) are more robust, more scalable, and best of all, more easily used to meet future demands not yet known.

The ad hoc wireless mesh network I'd like to see is just the civilian flip side of the military "dumb sensor infogrid" in the wired article, but where instead of nodes dropped on the battlefield, each wireless portable computer (the super cell phone of a year or two from now) will be both a client and router (each roaming client is also a simple "dumb" routing node for the network.)

So instead of all those PCS arrays on top of buildings all over the city we would all just have a little tiny micro tower inside each of our phones! My call jumps through the persons phone next to me, and through the persons phone next to them, until if finds its destination. That's freakin' cool, although I don't think the telco's will be too happy about their $b's in useless infrastructure if this ever pans out.

Anyway, this might be seen as a parallel to what happened with the internet itself. It does have origins in the DARPA net (defense department) but I don't think it's quite right to say the military created it. Also a bunch of super left hippies deep in academia created it. I think often those two groups come to similar conclusions on technical matters. Namely, the best looking conclusion. It's businesses, who need to earn those pesky profits, who come up with "smart" highly targeted solutions (ones they can charge money for) that always prove brittle, unscalable, and difficult to redeploy for the completely new hot application of tomorrow.
- jim 5-31-2002 1:16 am

ok now all that sounds GREAT!!!
- Skinny 5-31-2002 3:50 pm

what ever happened to Tobiko, the "toy" PDA's for kids that were getting banned in classrooms a year ago? i read someplace that they'd created an infogrid all across lower manhattan...each unit being, as you say, a router and a client.
the problem, of course, is that this kind of thing works great in a place like manhattan and not so great (presumably) in (let's say) a place like montana. so you probably get a bunch of local "dumb" networks but you still need the internet to connect them. and then you need a "smart" router at some point to decide whether packets should go onto the local network or the internet. and then that becomes a bottleneck. and then control of the bottleneck = scarce resource = what do you think happens then? ; )
- big jimmy 5-31-2002 5:30 pm

Yes, it would have to be a two tiered system. The internet as we know it is not going away. It will connect the various free local wireless (ad hoc? mesh?) nets. This is what happens right now if you are on a LAN (intranet) in an office. Your local network (either wired or wireless) is "free" for those who are on the inside, and then you are connected by a router to the larger internet. This is in fact how the internet was built: by connecting more and more local area networks together. That's all the internet is: a giant collection of smaller, free, networks.

I guess in these new networks (if it even happens this way) there will be a business opportunity for people who are in the right geographic point to provide mesh net to internet gateways. Presumably you'd have to pay to use these gateways. Projects like NoCatAuth are building free (GPL) software to deal with authentication. More corporate efforts like boingo are building single biller (is that a phrase?) systems which would allow you to create such a pay for use gateway but use a centralized payment system (so each gateway doesn't have to roll their own billing system, and customers can sign up with a single entity but use any boingo affiliated gateway anywhere in the world.) Boingo has a competitor as well, but I can't find the link at the moment. Cool efforts.

As always, it's a real pleasure to talk about these things with you. I haven't heard anything about Tobiko (tibiko?) since a mention in wired many months ago. I'll look around for something.
- jim 5-31-2002 6:53 pm

Oh yeah, sputnik is the other company I couldn't think of.

Sputnik Community Gateway software turns any WiFi-equipped PC into a turnkey wireless access node. This open, extensible platform makes public access networks both secure and convenient.

my email was fucked up all day; several other verizon dsl customers (ok, two of them) told me tonight they'd also been having problems. why? my theory: all those fbi agents seeing the web for the first time
- big jimmy 6-01-2002 10:32 am

I would like to know more about MESH Net? Someone was telling me about it being a spin off from ITT. I would also like to know is it compatible with PDA's and 802.11b? (WPAN's)
- MilEngr (guest) 7-17-2002 10:01 pm

There are various networking products that incorporate the word "mesh" in their names. But I use mesh as a general purpose name for a class of wireless networks where each node is also a router, and these node/routers can be in motion with respect to one another.

So PCS cellphones are not a mesh network because the nodes (your PCS phone) are not routers. The routers in a PCS network are the fixed installations you see on top of all the buildings. Your client node (your phone) is just a client which needs to connect to one of the fixed installations to access the network. In a hypothetical mesh cellphone network each phone would also serve as a mini version of what are the fixed antena installations in the PCS network. So in a fully mesh network there would be no need for any fixed antenna/router stations.

This high level understanding of mesh networks is very general. 802.11x standards would be a natural fit, but you could make many different protocols work in a mesh environment. Similarly, with PDAs, it would be a matter of specific implementations. Certainly nothing procludes a PDA from operating in a general mesh-like network.

I don't know many specifics about the original link in this thread. Because of the proprietary nature of their product I was never interested in following up. But similar technologies are coming in open formats.

Probably not the specific info you are looking for. I'm sure many people with more knowledge could be more clear (and no doubt correct some mistakes in my understanding.)
- jim 7-17-2002 10:43 pm