#8525 NORM Future : Collaboration doesn't work in adhoc mode (no mesh, no AP, no server)

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#8525: Collaboration doesn't work in adhoc mode (no mesh, no AP, no server)
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 Reporter:  gnu           |         Owner:  mbletsas      
     Type:  enhancement   |        Status:  new           
 Priority:  normal        |     Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  connectivity  |       Version:  not specified 
 Keywords:                |   Next_action:  never set     
 Verified:  0             |     Blockedby:  570           
 Blocking:                |  
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 One of the few OLPC mechanisms that only works on Mesh is sharing "under a
 tree".

 It's perfectly feasible for four or five kids with laptops, all
 sitting under a tree, to share over ad-hoc 802.11 mode.  They don't
 need a mesh that forwards packets; they can all hear each other on the
 radio just fine.  Mac laptops do this, for example, using the standard
 Zeroconf protocols to assign IP addresses to themselves, and find each
 other by name with mdns.

 OLPC's collaboration infrastructure doesn't support this -- or if some
 underlying layer does, there's no UI for it.  There's no way for the
 user to tell the laptop, "Talk to other nearby laptops -- without the
 mesh, without an access point".

 Future hardware might well want to discard the complicated and
 power-hungry mesh option, since we really aren't using it anyway,
 except for lease activation and this "under a tree" scenario.  That
 would give us lots more choices on future WiFi hardware.  If we fix
 collab to work in ad-hoc mode under a tree, and when two or more
 machines are plugged-together via Ethernet without a server, then not
 only will our future products have that choice, but also, our collab
 stuff will be MUCH easier to drop into ordinary Linux distros and
 applications.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8525>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>
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