[Battlemesh] Still no ad-hoc in Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich"?

[F L]

Dear all, 

We have proposed an alternative to WiFi Ad Hoc called WiFi-Opp, which is more flexible and doesn't require pairing (as in WiFi Direct which we tested on Galaxy SII).
It works on any Android versions which supports the mobile AP mode and uses a small hack to activate this mode automatically (w/o having the user manually activating it).
The details are available in the paper available at: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~lfranck/WiFi-Opp.pdf . 

In short, we propose to rely on spontaneous mobile APs (i.e., smartphones switching to AP or tethering mode for some time), a feature normally used to share Internet access, which we abuse to enable ad hoc communications.

We have a prototype running on 2.3.4 and we are currently extending the prototype to a fully-fledge implementation.
We will launch a website at the end of this month calling the open-source community to contribute and help maintaining the code. We hope you'll be eager to help us and that we can gather a large community around this project. We will then start discussing with the WiFi Alliance to have WiFi-Opp becoming an official standard.

For those who can't wait and want to help, please contact me or any other author of the paper. We're looking for iPhone developers for the iOS client part of WiFi-Opp on the iPhone.

Last word: Forget about Ad Hoc! Read the paper, you'll understand why. It will never be supported anyway.
--
Franck

On 19.10.2011, at 21:57, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:

> From the Android developer site:
> 
>  Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets users connect directly to nearby peer
>  devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No
>  internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps,
>  users can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new
>  features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media;
>  streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to
>  compatible printers or other devices.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is not ad-hoc mode -- it's "Wi-Fi direct", which is
> a Wi-Fi Alliance specification unrelated to IEEE 802.11.
> 
>  Is this the same as Ad Hoc mode?
>  No, this is not Ad-Hoc mode (also known as IBSS) but an extension to
>  the ubiquitous infrastructure mode of operation that can operate
>  without a dedicated access point. Ad Hoc, or IBSS, mode is a legacy
>  protocol for Wi-Fi devices, and Wi-Fi Direct is a new innovation. With
>  the technology underlying Wi-Fi Direct, a device can maintain
>  a simultaneous connection to an infrastructure network – this isn’t
>  possible with Ad Hoc.
> 
>  Is the specification underlying the Wi-Fi Direct certification program
>  based on the IEEE 802.11s (Mesh) or 802.11z (Direct Link Setup)
>  standards?
>  No. The specification underlying the Wi-Fi Direct certification
>  program was developed within the Wi-Fi Alliance by member
>  companies. It operates on 802.11 devices but is not linked to any
>  specific IEEE 802.11 amendment.
> 
>  http://www.wi-fi.org/files/faq_20101021_Wi-Fi_Direct_FAQ.pdf
> 
> -- Juliusz
> _______________________________________________
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> Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh

Best regards,
--
Dr. Franck Legendre
Communication Systems Group, ETH Zürich
Web: http://www.csg.ethz.ch/people/lfranck
Office: ETZ H-84, Gloriastrasse 35, CH-8092 Zürich
Phone: +41 44 632 70 51  Mob: +41 76 217 69 56 	

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