Southern Park

MAC protocol is implemented partly in hardware, partly in firmware, and partly in the device driver of Network Interface Card. Thus, changing the MAC layer can require hardware and firmware changes, a highly expensive proposition.

From google news, I knew that CEO Paul is going to give a show on "How will intel lose weight?" It is believed that Intel is going to fire more than 10,000 workers in the coming months. This quake was caused by the pressure from AMD, the biggest competitor of Intel. The whole process of this reorgnization started from April 2006 and guessed to be finished at the end of this year.
It is interesting that the price of intel's stock is runing up these days with the news of reorgnization. Experts said that this is because that this "reorg" news encourages investors of Wall Street.

Abstract:
I have a dream, that in my USTC. My group set up a wireless network using cheap WiFi Wireless Mesh Routers, which could cover almost anywhere of this university. Users here could make a short video message by their laptop or phones equiped with camera, then send it to the receiver. Controlled in a Peer-to-Peer way, the Wireless Mesh Work may forward this short video message to the receiver in a non-real-time way. Thus a transmission of video message is accomplished. As well as the video message, news of University could be pushed to all users by broadcast method. Also some little advertisement could be added in each message, for example a little logo or what ever. Due to the low cost and easy layout brought by wireless, we could keep it work without too much money, maybe balanced by the income of advertisement. Further step, maybe the size of the network could be enlarged to a much larger size, even to a city mesh network.

Keywords:
non-real-time, Peer-to-Peer, Wireless Mesh Network, Video Messenger

From the view of Intel's plan "Integrated Computing and Communication in one wireless end device", the idea comes up. The research issues contained in it mainly contains the following four parts:

1, We need a wireless Mesh Network for a campus size communication area. This may be implemented by IEEE 802.11a/b/g, as well as IEEE 802.11n with higher bandwidth. But Actually, we want to implement a non-real-time video Messenger, so the bandwidth will not be a very important issue. The protocol stack for this mesh network will be a good research topic, and this is just what we have done in last year. And it would also be my research topic of My Ph.D.'s Thesis.

2, A Peer-to-Peer solution for the message transmission. My video message does need to be a real-time one, so the bandwidth will not a problem. However, a good P2P solution will help a lot. Though I am not quite familiar with P2P, I know that P2P is becoming hotter and hotter, which will take the market for the near future. What's more, one hand the government and the ISPs could get a penny from it, P2P is said to be killed one day. On the other hand, P2P is really a money-saving method, that everyone loves it. So I believe some days later, it will be charged but the price should be very cheap. In the campus, the ISP will be the University, so the whole project could be totally free service.

3, How to make the messenger a safe one? The security is also a important part. After I have read the security section of IEEE 802.11s proposals, I know that security will a forever topic in wireless communication. How to keep all the user obey the basic rules, protect the Campus Wireless Mesh Network from being attacked, and manage the communication policies are the main points we should consider.

4, A good application both for Windows and Linux. Our group member Shi Lingzhi has implemented a real-time voice over IP before the start of this summer vocation. I do believe we could finish this programming work in a short time.

Conclude
This is just a interesting idea, I do not know which part is more difficult, the research part or the engineering part? What ever. Here from a research point of view, my group "Wireless Network Group" members will be interested in the 1st part, the members of "Grid & P2P" will be interested in the 2nd part, while the members of "Network Security" will be interested in the 3rd part. For those guys who are purchasing their Master's Degrees, they could try the 4th part. Wahu~~! This is so great a project, I really need much more guys help me to finish it. If we could get some founding from Intel or Zhongxing, it will be easier.

Or, maybe it is just a dream...

From www.soi.wide.ad.jp/class/20060000/slides/03/1.html
Intel Senior Fellow, Director, Communications Technology Lab Corporate Technology Group, Intel Corporation
Date: June 9, 2006
Place: Tokyo University, Japan
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