In "The Diamond Age", Neal Stephenson posits that very small computers can communicate over large distances by passing messages off one another. If you want to send a message to somebody off town, you don't need to have the range to reach an antenna or all the way to your friend, all you need is an unbroken chain of short range transceivers between you and your intended recipient. Your message would "ripple" outwards from you after you sent it until it reached your recipient.
The protocol would need to have some kind of anti-feedback mechanism in it to keep messages from bouncing around in the pool for eternity-- Eeyore, Jul 11 2000 Mobile Ad-hoc Networks IETF Working Group http://www.ietf.org.../manet-charter.htmlNot quite "baked", but certainly in progress. [egnor, Jul 11 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] Ad Hoc Wireless Networks http://www.ics.uci.edu/~atm/adhoc/UCI research on the topic, with a good link farm. [egnor, Jul 11 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] (?) Ad hoc Mobile Networks http://beta.ece.ucs...relessOverview.htmlMore research, from UCSB this time. [egnor, Jul 11 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] (?) Security Fundamentals in Ad-hoc Networking http://personal.eun...nternetworking.htmlA paper on the security problems unique to ad-hoc networks. [egnor, Jul 11 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] I'm not a network guy, but isn't this more or less how TCP/IP works, only with different types of connections?-- bookworm, Jul 11 2000 This is an active field of research; check out the links I've added, or search your favorite Web index or citation repository for "ad hoc mobile networking".
No, this is not "more or less how TCP/IP works", and no, "the trouble with this idea" is not that people will invent viruses. (You don't see virus packets floating around the Internet. Routing information isn't the same as active code.)-- egnor, Jul 12 2000, last modified Jun 14 2001 A mobile, ad-hoc network is no more virus-prone than a fixed, structured network.-- egnor, Jul 17 2000 Egnor: 'No more virus-prone than a fixed, structured network' that anyone can plug into at any time with whatever they like...-- StarChaser, Mar 31 2001 I think it is called IP and routing.-- jrand, Jun 14 2001 jkrand - I agree, I think what these people are saying is that an "internet" would be a good idea. I doubt it will ever take off though.
(RE: radio signals - it wouldn't work as there is no reason why ANYONE couldn't just piggyback your transmitters without paying for their use...)-- CasaLoco, Jun 14 2001 [StarChaser]: Anyone can plug into the Internet at any time with whatever they like. We survive somehow.
[jrand]: Conventional IP routing does not handle ad-hoc, dynamic networks formed by people wandering in and out of range with each other. Hence all the "ad hoc routing" schemes.
[CasaLoco]: Are you agreeing with, or making fun of, the "it wouldn't work as there is no reason why ..." statement?-- egnor, Jun 14 2001 Wasn't there a scene in a Denzel Washington movie where an evil spirit is after him, and when its current host touches another person it can move to that new person, and its chasing him through a crowd by jumping from person to person? This reminds me of that.-- PotatoStew, Jun 14 2001 Egnor, more or less. See 'Denial of Service' attack.-- StarChaser, Jun 14 2001 well in order for something like this to become popular, it would have to be reliable, and it needs to already be popular before its reliable. It would be kinda hard to get such a network to actually work, unless it was free, then everyone would get one. Then you could do like all the free internet services did and start charging people after they get used to your 'free' service!-- ziji, Sep 07 2002 Bun for the Stephenson reference!-- submitinkmonkey, Mar 18 2005 random, halfbakery