Ad-hoc mode is too poorly supported to depend on. And it's slow. In any case a phone cannot act as a hotspot for any length of time. On some firmwares enabling AP mode will switch off 3G. This is still fine for us. My idea was to put this decision at the user level, initially. The application chooses to "host" or to "join" some activity. It's a natural pattern in a group of people. The host of a meeting is less likely to walk out the door, and more likely to have power.
On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:14 PM, Lindley French <lindl...@gmail.com> wrote: >>There really is no cost to using a smartphone as hotspot except a >>little delay and some battery life, while switched on. > > Battery life may be more of an issue than you realize. Wifi radios use far > less power than 3G radios, but they still *do* use power, and the pattern of > network activity can have a strong effect on battery life. The most > important thing to realize is that people "expect" their smartphones not to > use much power while they're idle. If you're doing network activity all the > time in the background, that isn't the case, and people will become unhappy > with your software and uninstall it. (Note the reactions to the first > release of Google Now, which committed a similar sin with location services. > GPS receivers use a lot of power too.) > > To some extent you can be smart enough to reduce network activity > significantly while the phone is idle compared to active. Beacon less often, > include a parameter in the beacon letting other phones know you'll only be > "listening" for a short window after a beacon, etc. It's possible to give > the radio a break. > > My concern is that once a phone is trying to host an access point, it gets a > lot harder to be selective about when the wifi radio is active. It has to be > on pretty much all the time. The exception might be ad-hoc mode-----once one > node creates an ad-hoc network (which is surprisingly tricky on Android), > others can sustain the SSID without it. However, if the anchoring node was > providing DHCP services, then obviously that won't work anymore once it goes > offline. > > > On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:06 AM, Pieter Hintjens <p...@imatix.com> wrote: >> >> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 8:24 AM, crocket <crockabisc...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> > Nowadays, almost every city is covered with WiFi hotspots. >> > >> > And, almost every modern building and meetup is covered well by WiFi >> > hotspots. >> > >> > Most houses have a hotspot or two. >> > >> > Why don't we take advantage of existing WiFi hotspots? It would make >> > things >> > so much easier while we devise a way to connect phones directly or wait >> > for >> > 802.11s. >> >> You can, of course. There are some aspects to take into account: >> >> * It works perfectly e.g. in the home or office where people naturally >> put devices on their access point. >> * Many public hotspots, especially in the US, block client-to-client >> traffic. >> * Public hotspots are trivial to tap, if you care about anonymity. >> * There really is no cost to using a smartphone as hotspot except a >> little delay and some battery life, while switched on. >> _______________________________________________ >> zeromq-dev mailing list >> zeromq-dev@lists.zeromq.org >> http://lists.zeromq.org/mailman/listinfo/zeromq-dev > > > > _______________________________________________ > zeromq-dev mailing list > zeromq-dev@lists.zeromq.org > http://lists.zeromq.org/mailman/listinfo/zeromq-dev > _______________________________________________ zeromq-dev mailing list zeromq-dev@lists.zeromq.org http://lists.zeromq.org/mailman/listinfo/zeromq-dev
