What's the real scope of hardware openness?

[AVee]

On Tuesday 07 August 2007 13:07, Luca Dionisi wrote:
> On 8/7/07, Mikko J Rauhala <mjrauhal at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
> > And also, wrt. mesh networking, you still don't really want to allow
> > your phone, while it's mobile, to work as a bridge in the mesh;
> > otherwise the battery would be dead in no time. But sure, advocate lots
> > of open access points and perhaps putting the phone in mesh mode if it's
> > hooked up to external power. And still there will be severe scalability
> > issues, but what the hey, it's possible for _some_ N, right? :]
>
> Yep.
> Anyway I would insist in finding a solution that doesn't rely
> heavily in access points.  It would be a showstopper.
> IMHO we could reach the needed adoption level only if the
> mobile phone (that everyone nowadays carries with him) is
> the only needed spot.
> If the mesh protocol is smart, I think the consumption problem
> could be worked out.

Of course thing can always be optimised, but i doubt that will be sufficient.
Your idea boils down to replacing GSM towers with a handfull of NEOs. That 
whould roughly mean that all the power consumed a GSM tower now needs to be 
provided by the batteries of these NEOs. Thats not something trivial. And 
there will be added complexity because the system will have to cope with all 
the NEOs moving around, constantly changing routes from A to B etc. 
It may not be impossible, but it's not going to be easy.

Apart from that, systems like this are like public roads. With just a few 
users there is no problem at all, but when things get crowded you will need 
some rules or it will become a useless mess.

AVee