I wonder if the old, tried and true fidonet software could be used to produce a reliable peer-to-peer store-and-forward asynchronous wireless mesh network?
Mitsubishi is partnering with Detecon, the engineering and consulting affiliate of Deutsche Telecom, which holds the patent. These two companies will form a new one, tentatively called MOTERAN Networks, to deliver the technology. They plan to roll out the technology for on-campus corporate network use at first, then for home use, and finally for public-access hot spots and emergency backup networks. Eventually, the technology will also be used as a low-cost VOIP (voice over IP) solution.
In a nutshell, MOTERAN will allow any client PC or handheld with an IEEE 802.11x card or Bluetooth capabilities to behave as a relay point to communicate with the next terminal down the line and to use this terminal to move packets along to their ultimate destination.
As a result, any one of these devices could be the host for Internet access: One person subscribes to an ISP for $20 per month, and everyone can hop across devices until they reach that host and log on.
--more in Ephraim Schwartz's column in Infoworld
