
This Little-Known iOS Feature Will Change the Way We Connect - lispython
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/03/apple-multipeer-connectivity/
======
mikestew
"If you’re out in the woods camping and need help, you could broadcast your
needs in the hope someone picks it up."

You could, but it's unlikely to do you any good using a radio whose output is
measured in milliwatts. Unless "out in the woods camping" means a KOA.

"Similarly, during a natural disaster, you could help locate loved ones and
people in need, even with non-operational cellular towers."

Same deal: no, you probably won't. A cell phone is a radio, and it's a pretty
crappy radio that relies very much on existing infrastructure. When that
infrastructure goes down, the only people you'll be chatting with will be the
ones you can physically see. Even the 5 watt handheld radio that I have (which
requires a license to operate) may only be good for a few miles in rough
terrain.

It would nice if the article stuck to what is feasible (the music festival
example) and disposed with the hyperbole. Remote villages in Bumfukistan will
not be getting internet access because of this.

~~~
sliverstorm
A 5 watt handheld is only good for a few miles in normal terrain. I think mine
caps around 4-5 miles around town (suburb with absolutely no buildings over 3
stories), although that's with a factory ducky antenna

~~~
mikestew
Huh, I wasn't aware that there was anyone that didn't order a gain antenna at
the same time they ordered the radio. :-)

I regularly hit a repeater 12 miles away. A bit fuzzy, but it works. But I'm
using a gain antenna that's a bit longer than stock, you know, for street cred
(street cred being very important amongst ham radio operators). Hook it up to
the mag mount antenna in the car, and it expands to 20 or 30 miles (dunno
exactly, haven't hit the limit yet).

In an attempt to keep this on the topic at hand, anecdotal evidence would
suggest (and solid empirical evidence confirms) that the antenna is important
as well as power output. Combine wimpy power output with an antenna that has
to fit in a 4" phone, and without cell towers or WiFi APs you might as well
just shout to the person you're trying to contact.

~~~
sliverstorm
What can I say, I'm a ham with zero street cred.

Well, that's not true. I just don't invest much in ham equipment; I devote my
radio funds to my emergency services band equipment instead.

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sirkneeland
Wired, stop with the buzzfeed/upworthy clickbait titles for your articles.

It eventually means the people you really want to read your articles (the
educated, tech-savvy influencer types) will avoid them. I know I've started to
avoid buzzfeed-style titles since they are more often than not just leading to
something with more effort going into the title than the article...

~~~
205guy
You know, I almost didn't click on the article because of the nature of the
title. But Wired has been consistently good in my experience, so I gave them
the benefit of the doubt. The article lived up to their good reputation in my
mind.

So that leaves me wondering why they chose such a title knowingly. I suspect
it was to poke fun at such linkbaity titles. I also suspect that they rely
more on regular readers than being linked to, thus they can allow themselves
the risk of being confused for linkbait.

Of course, this argument is somewhat one-sided: people who didn't read the
article won't bother to come here and tell us whether it lived up to their
expectation for the title. In some cases, I do read the HN threads but not the
articles just to avoid a website but see what poeple have to say about a
topic.

------
talklittle
Stackoverflow question comparing Multipeer with WiFi Direct:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19067794/ios-7-multipeer-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19067794/ios-7-multipeer-
connectivity-and-android-wifi-direct)

Multipeer and WiFi Direct are not compatible. Stackoverflow user @barbazoo
hypothesizes Multipeer is using Bluetooth Classic.

 _iOS Bluetooth Classic is known the be under the Apple MFA Accessory API
tight control and lockdown, including the MFA authentication challenge-
reposne. Apple controls the MFA encryption keys (either in software or by the
accessory authentication chips). It makes it inaccessible to other platforms._

------
spikexxx
When did Wired start using the Buzzfeed article title generator?

~~~
cliveowen
A long time ago unfortunately. The articles themselves are pretty good most of
the time, but the titles are terrible. They always make sure to mention a big
name company/product that may or may not be tangentially related to the
article. I'm really sick of this behaviour.

------
doe88
Basically it is the same framework used internally by Airdrop on iOS.

I once read in the documentation an interesting fact (note that I haven't
tested it, so I could be wrong or misremember a detail), for instance if using
this framework a device _A_ wants to send a message to a device _C_ but _A_
only has activated BLE and _C_ only has activated Wifi, if there is a device
_B_ nearby with BLE and Wifi activated it will automatically be used as relay
between _A_ and _C_ to transmit this message.

~~~
205guy
That is really the big question about open mesh networks: how much of other
people's traffic is going through your open node. The more traffic you allow,
the further the mesh can reach. But I really think it should be zero in the
case of phones for security/privacy and limited battery reasons. That of
course means you are limited to people within direct reach of your phone's
broadcasting power (would be interesting to get actual numbers for this).

Also, the surveillance issues around mesh networks seem rather thorny. Being
open, it seems trivial for authorities to set up listening stations
everywhere. Yes, you are an anonymous handle, but you are also very
localizable.

Just as an additional data point, another example of mesh network is the smart
meter. It uses more powerful wifi, but it sends its data through other smart
meters (down the street through your neighbor's smart meters) to reach its
recipient (the phone company).

------
talklittle
Mattt Thompson expands on the topic, and suggests this and similar
technologies will be a game changer for privacy and security, including
impositions by governments and ISPs:
[https://gist.github.com/mattt/9836041#file-multipeer-
connect...](https://gist.github.com/mattt/9836041#file-multipeer-connectivity-
revisited-md)

------
ismail
Maybe i am missing something, but can some tell me why this is big news? What
is so special about Apples implementation?

I think maybe the news here is not actually the Apple tech, but rather the
first app in this class to really catch on.

Alljoyn from Qualcomm has been around for quite a while as well.

[https://www.alljoyn.org/](https://www.alljoyn.org/)

played around a bit with Aljoyn.

It effectively works like a service bus. You send a message and the bus will
route it to the correct receiver. Pretty awesome.

You could have two people drawing on the same canvas at the same time and info
appears almost instantaneously. Also opens up other types of gaming
experiences.

Anyone with experience with the Apple side, care to provide more info?

*Edit more details on alljoyn

~~~
ctdonath
What's special is it's on enough devices with a high enough proximity density
to make such anonymous ad-hoc locale-oriented communications feasible. A
chicken-and-egg problem, solved.

------
jchrisa
Here are a few threads from the Couchbase Lite mailing list talking about how
to use Multipeer / Bonjour:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mobile-
couchbase/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mobile-
couchbase/multipeer/mobile-couchbase/I_9zJ8EePK4/JsvmYPJO99UJ)

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mobile-
couchbase/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mobile-
couchbase/multipeer/mobile-couchbase/K6lZ-YD87VI/t0I8afm1ZVIJ)

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mobile-
couchbase/pNq...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mobile-
couchbase/pNqUQ84EyTE)

Maybe that helps someone wanting to share JSON around a peer group.

------
AnimalMuppet
I couldn't help but think of Turkey as I read this.

You want to cut off the internet? Fine. You can't stop us from communicating,
though.

Although if there was an agent with a phone in the area, he could see what
everyone was saying, even if not who was saying it.

~~~
batuhanicoz
We've used mesh networking during Gezi[0]. But I don't think most people would
understand how to use this or will have it installed in case of a general
ban[1].

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey)

[1] People started using VPN's and most people knows what DNS is now. So,
there is hope.

~~~
crucialfelix
> But I don't think most people would understand how to use this or will have
> it installed in case of a general ban

Years ago we would have said the same thing about internet access. 'How could
the internet (or mobile data) help in emergency or oppression situations ?
Only geeks would have such a thing. ' (1990s)

------
qwerta
Anything similar for android? Looks like nice project for hobby hacking.

~~~
Groxx
At least as far as I'm aware, somewhat. But it's probably not as transparent
or as stable.

Super-local: android beam does NFC pairing -> bluetooth transfer. Not exactly
multi-peer, but perhaps it's possible to keep those connections open?

Peer-to-peer:
[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/p2p/...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/p2p/package-
summary.html) though apparently it's a bit buggy. A game or two I've played
seems to use this, and it works 90+% of the time, but it's definitely not
foolproof and there are random drops.

------
senthil_rajasek
[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Multip...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MultipeerConnectivity/Reference/MultipeerConnectivityFramework/Introduction/Introduction.html)

"The Multipeer Connectivity framework provides support for discovering
services provided by nearby iOS devices using infrastructure Wi-Fi networks,
peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth personal area networks ..."

------
fsckin
>Mesh networking is like this unicorn.

No kidding. It'd be great if this evolved to where half or more of phones in a
nearby vicinity could completely shutdown their cellular radio and use the
mesh network for connectivity, saving (on average) lots of battery life and
providing more reliable service for all.

~~~
sliverstorm
How much power do you expect to save? I mean, standard star topology WiFi uses
less power than a 3G radio. But you don't _access_ a mesh network, you are
_part_ of a mesh network. Your radio will be _constantly_ relaying
information. Sounds pretty power-hungry to me.

It's a lot like BitTorrent, where on average everyone must seed as much as
they leech, except in this case every packet is relayed N times. So for a
healthy network, everyone must relay N times as much as they consume.

------
pstadler
I could be wrong but I think the excellent Command-C[1] app is using this
technology.

[1] [http://danilo.to/command-c](http://danilo.to/command-c)

------
bsaul
#triestheapp #nooneshere #uninstall

------
Fasebook
Anonymous™ chatroom for iPhone!

