Why do you have to choose between an access point or an ad-hoc network?
My laptop is currently connected to my home's wifi router which is one floor beneath me. My desktop PC two metres away is also connected to this router, and transferring data between the two systems is quite slow, as the signal has to go through the floor and back up.
An ad-hoc network between my laptop and PC would be faster, as they are right next to each other. But to set such a network up, I would have to disconnect them both from their internet gateways, which is inconvenient, so I never bother.
If they both had two wifi NICs, I could keep one connected to the Internet gateway and one on an ad-hoc network. There's nothing to stop me installing another card in the PC and laptop myself, but I just think it would be neat if all wifi capable devices came with two adapters by default, with one permanently wired to a public ad-hoc wifi mesh network. Especially devices such as smartphones, which cannot typically have additional NICs installed.
I'm not sure how devices would decide which is the faster route at a given moment, or other details. But perhaps those parts of the problem have already been baked by mesh network engineers.-- idris83, Mar 22 2011 // they are right next to each other //
There's a technology called "wires" that allow data to be transmitted between computers without the need for radio communication ....-- 8th of 7, Mar 22 2011 //It would be neat if all wifi capable devices came with two adapters by default//
At twice the cost?-- Jinbish, Mar 22 2011 // wires //
You know when you throw a knackered cable into the recycling? Do you know where it ends up? It gets sorted into a special collection box which when full, gets sent back to where the cables originally came from: the bowels of hell. The devil winds the recovered wire around peoples' souls and straps them to stalactites so he can prod them with hot pokers and etc. The wires are very good for this purpose because they have had years of experience doing similar things to people up on the surface of Earth.
// At twice the cost? //
Yeah but how much do they cost these days? Like 3 or 4 nanodollars?-- idris83, Mar 22 2011 We get the impression you don't like fixed wiring. Is that right ?-- 8th of 7, Mar 22 2011 I have the bluetooth headphones to prove it.-- idris83, Mar 22 2011 I'm not sure how, but a program called Connectify lets me simultaneously connect to the internet through my wifi card and use it to create an ad hoc network.-- DIYMatt, Mar 22 2011 Internesting. Apparently connectify works with cards that can be put into "access point mode". I wonder if this is purely for sharing a wifi connection with other client devices or if a peer-to-peer mesh can be made from it also.-- idris83, Mar 22 2011 random, halfbakery