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Wireless Networking Hardware

Connecting Devices With Wireless Grids 77

Posted by timothy from the linky-linky dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "A new concept is emerging in networking: wireless grids. These grids connect all kinds of wireless devices, such as sensors or cell phones, with each other and with more traditional wired grids. IEEE Internet Computing has devoted a very long and thorough article about these wireless grids which can deliver new resources, locations of use, and institutional ownership and control patterns for grid computing via ad hoc distributed resource sharing." (Read more below.)

"The article says that applications for wireless grids fall into three classes: the ones which aggregate information from the range of input/output interfaces found in nomadic devices, those which focus on the locations and contexts in which the devices exist, and those that leverage the mesh network capabilities of collections of nomadic devices. The authors add that these grids "emerged from a combination of the proliferation of new spectrum market business models, innovative technologies deployed in diverse wireless networks, and three related computing paradigms: grid computing, P2P computing, and Web services." If you're interested in the future of wireless networks, the original article is a must-read, but check this summary if your time is limited."
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Connecting Devices With Wireless Grids More

Connecting Devices With Wireless Grids

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  • Printable version... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom AT thomasleecopeland DOT com> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:24PM (#10070802) Homepage
    ...is right here [computer.org].

  • The Wireless model (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stecoop ( 759508 ) * on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:24PM (#10070813) Journal
    It would be nice if the Internet cloud bubble dissolves when there are enough wireless devices to remove the necessary Internet link via the high-speed backbone.

    • Re:The Wireless model (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dan_sdot ( 721837 ) * on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:33PM (#10070913)
      Yes, and it would also be nice is there was a keg of Anchor Steam on the every corner with a beautiful woman in a bikini pumping it. These guys need to ground their thinking a little. This isn't the utopia of wireless devices. If someone else was using my wireless device, the it would cost me cpu time, bandwitdth, battery life, etc. I can't afford to pay to make everyone elses experience better. This will not catch on.

      • Re:The Wireless model (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sean23007 ( 143364 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:42PM (#10071006) Homepage Journal
        Hmm. You seem to think that in this situation your handheld would be serving everyone else around you, and all of them are just leeching, and you don't get any service from anywhere, it all originates with you. Well, I should probably point out to you that that's not really how sharing models work. When you're not using your resources, they are shared among your peers who might need them. When you are using resources, if you need more than your machine possesses, your peers share with you. And the wireless grid network spreads across all the devices. You are just a link in the chain. Not the start of the chain. Everyone is not leeching off you. And you aren't paying to make everyone else's experience better. Everyone is paying. And everyone gets more than they would if they were going it alone. That's the point.
        • To boil down what sean23007 said, it's internet Communism. Due to human nature, it won't work, unless the system can't be changed to block sharing of resources. There will always be a few that will share, but many more that will leech. TowerDave
          • You could design the grid "participant" software such that it would only use the idle resources of your device.

            So your network bandwidth and CPU resources would be 100% yours when you needed them but when your device was partially or fully idle the resources of your device would be made availlable to other users and devices.

            Personally, security issues not withstanding, I would have no problem with someone making use of my idle resources as long as when I needed them they would be availlable to me instant
            • So your network bandwidth and CPU resources would be 100% yours when you needed them but when your device was partially or fully idle the resources of your device would be made availlable to other users and devices.

              So potentially it could be running at 100% all the time. Local processes (me) have priority, but if I'm not using it, someone else is.

              Unfortunately, this would be a cool resource for spammers and other nefarious persons.
            • One issue that none of these points adrress (and is the big hurdle in wireless devices) is power consumption. A CPU that is pegged is drwaing a lot of power and that usage also involves a whole lot of TxRx which is the big juicer.

              Again you could desing the client software to throttle and limit all resources and possibly even be intelligent to know which ones to limit when (i.e. plugged into power jack, just limit CPU, etc.)

              QoS and security issues are also a big deal. I have kicked around some of these i
            • >I would have no problem with someone making use of my idle resources

              Think of the battery resource.
              Although I'm sure limits could be set, I'd still be careful with granting resources to others. Like, you've got 11% battery left and by the time you actually get online to check your email, your notebook goes into suspend. Oops!

          • So in Internet Capitalism "Devices use bandwidth" in Internet Communism - it the other way around.

      • Re:The Wireless model (Score:3, Insightful)

        by putch ( 469506 )
        while i do agree that for the forseeable future this is fantasy it is an exciting idea.

        30-40 years ago the concept of a personal computer would have evoked a similar response. let alone some kind of "invisible global network" that people could access with computers carried in their pockets.

        this could work if and when mobile cpus have enough power (both computing and electrical) and, i would imagine, that much of this "grid" would be stationary Access Points (or perhaps they'd be more like relay stations)
    • Yeah... especially since the Internet bubble is going to explode tomorrow.

    • Re:The Wireless model (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wouldn't it. Someone else said that ad hoc high speed/low latency/few hops networks don't get built by anti-establishment types with good intentions. Real work and plannings needs to be done.

  • um... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:26PM (#10070834)
    "but check this summary if your time is limited." - my time is always limited, for I am a mortal man.

  • Health Implications (Score:4, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:27PM (#10070844)
    Anyone worry that years from now they'll find out wireless causes cerebral cancer or something? Sad part is you can't run away.

    Just like lasik eye surgery or x-rays, all the bad news come after marketing have cashed in. Leaving the scientists, engineers and doctors to pick up the slack.

    • Anyone worry that years from now they'll find out wireless causes cerebral cancer or something?

      Not really, no.

    • Good point, but probably won't happen. All these things operate at very low radiation energies, and even they are probably going to go down as technology evolves. In any case, I dont think they would be much worse than cell phones, and millions (billions?) of users have not died after long exposures, strongly suggesting that the're pretty much ok.
    • Anyone worry that years from now they'll find out wireless causes cerebral cancer or something? Sad part is you can't run away.

      Everyone knows that low power radio transmissions are lethal. No one exposed to them lived past 110 years!!!!

    • Sad part is you can't run away.

      Yes, yes you can. Unless you're talking about directed beams (and you are not), then running away is a highly effective method of reducing your exposure to radiation. Worry about your cordless phone before you worry about people putting up WAPs everywhere.

      Just like lasik eye surgery or x-rays, all the bad news come after marketing have cashed in.

      Yeah. Too bad we're stuck with x-rays. Damn advertising.

    • Well yes you can get away --- with a tinfoil hat or mumetal

    • I don't so much worry about the cancer... I think that's just a scare tactic by the wired phone providers. What I do worry about is that, like taking your picture with a camera, the wireless technology will slowly take pieces of my soul. And without a soul I would be visible to the alien hoards travelling through the metaspace between us and Arpotek VIII.

      Even thought lasik eye surgey did allow us to see into the horrors of the metaspace, and some believe that a highly concentrated beam of x-rays projecte

  • Newer development in wireless grids (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:28PM (#10070854)
    I hear some company invented the ultimate in wireless communication. Some kind of conductor cord which can be used to transmit information from point A to point B along a path of your choosing, without interference to any other transmission.

  • connecting... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:29PM (#10070872)
    Interesting research but I hope that their theories remain just that (at least as far as using CPUs from personal wireless devices).

    Yes, plenty of people are using wireless devices, and yes they could be used together to encode a concert or whatever, but no, I wouldn't want to be sharing my devices CPU time without compensation (say that encoding's output for free).

    I want devices to be smaller, faster, and use less power. This seems to promote a need for more CPU time and a bigger battery.

    Is that a wireless grid device in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

    • Re:connecting... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ignignot ( 782335 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:38PM (#10070968) Journal
      I wouldn't want to be sharing my devices CPU time without compensation

      Just because it is possible doesn't mean it will have to be involuntary. Maybe instead you'd be credited small amounts of cpu time from the cell phone company, and at the end of the month see a small reduction in your bill. Maybe if you went around using everyone else's cpu, you'd see a small charge in your bill. But this is somewhat missing the point - think of what it would be like to record a concert from the viewpoint of 100 different people simultaneously, then produce a final recording from that! Or on vacation in Japan, instead of going home with just your photographs of monuments, having all the photos taken at that monument while you were there!
      • Precisely. Some sort of market based on CPU processing is a must-have for this sort of technology to take off. If there's something I need to compute and my cellphone/PDA/computer can't do it on its own (or it would consume too much electricity), it'd be great if I could expend some "credits" to get the CPU power I need to get it done. Similarly, if my desktop has a wireless connection and isn't doing anything else, I could put it to work to earn credits.

    • Re:connecting... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Apathetic1 ( 631198 )
      If wireless grid computing takes off, battery and CPU time might be a good tradeoff for access to the massive computing power of the grid should one need it.

      Some kind of a system where a client is given tit-for-tat access to grid CPU time might make a lot of sense.
      • If wireless grid computing takes off, battery and CPU time might be a good tradeoff for access to the massive computing power of the grid should one need it.

        I suppose I am not being forward-looking enough but I just don't see a need for major number crunching via the grid from a wireless device. It's not like my PDA/phone needs all that much horsepower to load webpages and send out SMS/AIM messages. In fact, it seems to do that just fine with the 15 hours of battery life it gets daily.
        • Remember: Wireless != Portable.

          Wireless could be the home server box sat in the corner slaving away.

          Wireless could be your wristwatch sized sensors on limited power.

          Wireless could be a huge network tower on the hill hooked directly into the fat pipe.

          Each device has its own capabilities, and whilst (for instance) your PDA can't perform the processing, it can forward a few packets and act as a go between.

          Whilst not taking up much of your precious battery life, your PDA becomes a very important link in th

    • Re:connecting... (Score:5, Informative)

      by igrp ( 732252 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @03:13PM (#10071333)
      I was going to hold off and mod in this thread but there's one point I would like to make instead.

      You address a valid point and your attitude is probably shared by many. However, there's also the bigger picture which few people take the time to look at (and I don't mean any single person).

      These wireless grid concepts (at least the more sophisticated ones) are basically scalable, distributed computing solutions. They solve a lot of problems but also suffer from some of the problems that all distributed computer networks have.

      The more common wireless grid devices become (provided this idea ever takes off) we'll likely see two major changes: on the one hand, efficiency will increase dramatically (more devices = a bigger ressource pool, common protocols, less overhead). And on the other hand, we'll see a change in how we view CE and mobile computing in general. Thing about it: most of the time our PDAs, cell phones, etc. don't actually do anything, but rather just idle.

      Those spare CPU cycles could, however, be used by others in the grid which would in turn require their device to be less powerful (since they can depend on the network's CPU power and need to do less computing onboard).

      There are three potential big problems I see with this though:

      • Battery life. The more our devices actually 'work', the more power they consume. Add the network/radio overhead which generally tends to consume quite a bit of power on top of that and you have a problem. People have to come to accept a certain standard of usability though. So you either need to limit power consumption, and hence cripple a mobile device's effectivity as a grid note or add bigger batteries.
      • Manufacturers. They basically won't like this. It takes a less powerful device to accomplish the same task. So why buy a new gizzmo if you can just use some nearby grid node.
      • And lastly, sheer economics. For this to work, people would have to see benifits now. Nobody wants to buy a new PDA that has less battery life just to be part of something big if there's no immediate gain. And, due to the fact that you need a whole bunch of grid nodes in order to have a useful network of some sort, that just won't happen.

        "Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."

      • "Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."

        Not quite. If nobody else had a device which you could use, nobody would be freeloading off of you. It would just be a device that you bought that has a feature that you can't use until other people have compatible devices. If nobody else has compatible devices, you can't use their resources and they
        • Well, in a way you're completely right. The problem, as I see it though, is that during that early phase there will only be a few early adopters that have devices with distributed computing capabilities (introductory MSRP and basic economics of scale).
          So the benefits of having a grid-enabled device will be small to non-existent. Hence, fewer consumers will jump on the bandwagon (since the actual devices are (1) still expensive, and (2) do not really offer any additional functionality).

          The only way to ensu

          • Good points, I don't see how it could work, unless services were developed that either only work with a distributed system or work a million times better in a distributed environment, and then the public was made to want those services/features. Or, if the actual technology per device could be made to not cost all that much and when idle it doesn't impact the performance of the device, manufacturers could start sneaking it into current devices and, in a year or two, the network can really start up because e
      • The application, at least the first application, probably will not be in an environment where many people own the resources. Instead this will enable the ad-hoc sharing of resources owned by a single entity or a small conglomeration of entities. The application is in business, in sharing resources in a fairly controlled although transient environemnt. Once the infrastructure is in place for manufacturing maybe the home consumer will find a need for it.
      • Battery life. The more our devices actually 'work', the more power they consume. Add the network/radio overhead which generally tends to consume quite a bit of power on top of that and you have a problem. People have to come to accept a certain standard of usability though. So you either need to limit power consumption, and hence cripple a mobile device's effectivity as a grid note or add bigger batteries.

        This technology is not right around the corner. It's a long ways off. Everything could be differen

  • not a great [scalable] idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:30PM (#10070874)
    wireless presents some issues such as limited bandwidth and high latency over long links or routes. distributed computing requires very low latency and very high bandwidths, and wireless just doesn't seem to me like a solution which will attain the same performance per dollar (unless it's a weird circumstance, like multiple sites separated by many many miles, but even then some kind of frame or T1 might do better than wireless or microwave).

  • What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:32PM (#10070900) Homepage Journal
    This sounds like just another attempt to coin a new term. Skimming through the article I don't see any new concepts, nor even new combinations of concepts. Grid computing instead of P2P, now wireless grids, what next - P2P XML?

  • Trust and Security (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Keitopsis ( 766128 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:42PM (#10071014) Journal
    Couple of thoughts:

    1) Can we really do authentication for masses of "grid" members without eating up the bandwidth?

    2) Is this the next market for spoofing-spam distributors?

  • The Ultimate Application (Score:3, Funny)

    by Phat_Tony ( 661117 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:44PM (#10071031)
    The ultimate application of this technology?

    Spying on Birds. [wired.com]

  • The Chinese lottery (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:45PM (#10071044) Homepage
    This all reminds me of the "chinese lottery" idea. With all these devices connected, there definitely seems to be a possibility that someone could (illegitimately) harnass the power to crack strong cryptography. Especially since, unlike computers, nobody is expecting their Cellphone or whatever to get hacked. Also unlike a similar scenario with computers on the internet, there could potentially be far far more devices on a network like this.

    For those unfamiliar with the idea of a Chinese Lottery, there was a paper written proposing that consumer products could be used as a method of distributed computing. The example used in the paper was that the Chinese government could equip its radios with low-power computing systems and broadcast the data they need processed. The owner of whichever radio finally cracked the key would be rewarded (like a lottery). This was just an example of the idea by the way, it wasn't proposed as a real threat.
  • Especially along the lines of free speach,

    How ever, before any of this can REALLY take off, we first must insure that the underlying security is safe.

    Dont build on quicksand if it has windows in it!.

  • Am I just being dense, or...? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Deep Fried Geekboy ( 807607 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @02:54PM (#10071126)
    ...isn't this a very long-winded way of saying 'the internet will soon have a substantial wireless component'?

    I can't see what's new here at all. Yes, there will have to be a few more technologies for managing ad-hoc networks. But that's about it.

    As for us all sharing our resources in one warm fuzzy anarcho-syndicalist wireless IT hive, dream on. (Or, more precisely, give T-Mobile your first-born).

  • It's just munchkins [ifindkarma.com] warmed over again. Until someone actually gets these things mass produced, I'm not biting.

    Seriously, it's a great idea, but I need to see some serious prototypes before I get excited.

  • Don't do it, it's a conspiracy! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @03:40PM (#10071564) Homepage
    These types of grids are part of a conspiracy by the battery companies to generate more sales.

    Data:
    1. A portable device that's part of a mesh or grid will participate in data transfer for other devices.
    2. A portable device in said condition is consuming more power then a device that is waiting patiently for user input or a signal targeted for it.
    3. As a result of items #1 and #2, the batteries are drained much faster and more often.
    4. Each charge cycle shortens the length of your device.

    Conclusion: You will need to buy more replacement batteries.

    Somewhere in Vegas, the Energizer bunny is doing lines of Cocaine off the breasts of a dancer while Duracell the kangaroo (or whatever) is dancing behind him.

    Fight the (battery) power!
  • ... its just new 'implementation'.

    Concept-wise, the notion of a wireless grid of computing devices is as old as the hills, or at least i-Tron ...

    As with i-Tron, though, the problem has been in-fighting between the various chipset/SOC vendors for control of the protocol ... 'licensing revenue' as a line-item has always been a big barrier for implementors who want to get multi-vendor devices talking with each other.

    As usual, its not a technological stumbling block, its a legal/business one. However it seem
    • people want wireless, and a fairly significant portion of the market are willing to pay for it, already. That market weight is starting to overcome the big-business reasons for holding all this tech back, it seems...

      If you dig around, you can find online all the early docs for the ARPAnet, which led to the Internet. It was a military project, of course; ARPA was/is the US Defense Dept's Advanced Research Projects Agency. One thing very noticeable was that all the early diagrams were wireless. And there
  • The computational overhead necessary for managing routes to keep the number of hops sane in this model wouldn't be practical.

    This sounds like a fancy way of discussing mesh networking. It is quite simple--too many wireless hops across a mesh adds high latency and complex routing tables.

    For real-time communications you might as well forget this being viable.
  • As long as 802.11 MAC will be used for such networks, it won't "blow". I think they've to invent new wireless communication technique to build mesh networks of thousands of nodes.

    See http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000072.htm [smallworks.com] for interesting text about this.
    • I do have a very vague Idea of how this could be done...I'll try and develop it and maybe even write a master's thesis on it. It is basically a routing algorithm that best exploits a network with a very large number of very interconnected nodes with moderately slow individual connections.
  • Who picked this color scheme? It might look good on a CRT but the light shades of tan and puke-like colors similar to tan are indistinguishable on an LCd and the entire thing looks disgusting. It makes me want to puke.

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