
Nearby Connections 2.0: offline high bandwidth peer to peer device communication - AndrewDucker
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/announcing-nearby-connections-20-fully.html
======
Animats
_Today we 're announcing the availability of this API across all Android
devices running Google Play services 11.0 and up._

Of course, Google had to lock up peer to peer communication by tying it to
their online store. It's also unencrypted and unauthenticated, so you don't
want to use this for home control.

~~~
voltagex_
It used to be that these kinds of protocols would be reversed and
reimplemented pretty quickly. See Pidgin (GAIM) and countless other instant
messengers. I wonder what's happened - I see a lot less reverse engineering
going on these days.

~~~
throwaway2048
[https://microg.org/](https://microg.org/)

Google play store APIs and protocols ARE being reverse engineered and re
implemented.

I run microG with store apps with no issues with everything I have tried.

~~~
voltagex_
I meant more broadly: no one's reimplemented AirDrop, and MicroG won't have
this new one for quite a while.

~~~
true_religion
Did people used to widely reverse engineer protocols that weren't related to
communications and chat?

Doing it to a chat-app has an obvious benefit: you can use your own
application with your custom UX, and connect it with multiple networks at
once, or multiple accounts at the same time on the same network.

Doing it with something like Airdrop is kind of a nebulous proposal. If you
want to share files with someone next to you, and for some reason you hate
Airdrop, then there's lots of other alternatives. Reverse engineering Airdrop
gets you nothing special.

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pat2man
This is one of those features that really needs cross platform support. If
Apple and Google could just work together and let MultipeerConnectivity and
Nearby Connections work together maybe developers would actually develop
interesting applications for peer to peer.

~~~
rektide
It's presumably built around WiFi Aware, which is cross platform, but the WiFi
"Alliance" (owners) won't tell you what it is or how it works or how you can
make use of it.

So this is what we get.

100% agreed though. IMO is poison and a major regression from where things
stood- barely working wifi p2p- since it doesn't make any interoperability
affordances/offerings.

~~~
tjohns
WiFi Aware is an OS-level feature that's being added in the upcoming Android O
release. It also requires new hardware support, which means most phones don't
support it yet.

Nearby isn't using WiFi Aware. We want it to work on all existing Android
devices.

Internally, it's using a mix of WiFi, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth LE & Classic
Bluetooth.

Getting proximity-based P2P messaging to work correctly across all devices is
complicated. With Nearby Connections, we're trying to provide an abstraction
layer that makes it easy.

------
crudbug
Another Google specific API. Please use open standard based communication
framework [0] for your "connected" things.

[0] [https://openconnectivity.org](https://openconnectivity.org)

------
jff
> the TV urging you to continue binging on your saved guilty-pleasures
> watchlist

The shelves in the grocery store calling out to me because they know I like
potato chips! Can't wait!

~~~
TeMPOraL
I would love to go full Watch_Dogs on those shelves. They'll probably have
those e-ink price tags that are now popular; it would be cool to make them
display "IT'S A TRAP" instead.

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matt_wulfeck
> _Imagine walking into a hotel room and having the temperature set just
> right, your favorite sub-genre of progressive-math-rock playing in the
> background, and the TV urging you to continue binging on your saved guilty-
> pleasures watchlist._

I really can't help but cringe. Please let that never be my future, where I
broadcast out personal information to the entire room everywhere I go.

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mxuribe
1\. cross platform support and interactivity - at protocol level. 2\.
innovators build platforms and apps. 3\. success and liberty for all!

Seriously though, totally agree with a few commenters (pat2man, mataug), open
standards will win the day; any day...including future days.

~~~
jwfxpr
I am genuinely curious in wondering what proportion of the open standards in
technology begin as innovative evolutions of existing standards with only
limited support at introduction, like this is. Isn't this essentially one of
the accepted pathways to open standards, build the system, invite
collaborators, and see if it gains acceptance and traction?

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Corrado
I can see this as a way to configure IoT devices more easily. For example,
setting up a new printer is often a hassle; using a tiny, barely workable,
touch screen and an inefficient menu system is no fun. Imagine you could just
plug it in and your smartphone comes to life with a nice GUI. It could even
pre-configure it for you. Another example is Amazon's Alexa devices.
Currently, you have to push buttons and install a custom app on your phone and
it can be very confusing.

The classroom examples also ring true to real world experiences. My wife is a
teacher and has used several different proprietary "voting" devices in the
past to great effect. However, they all used different hardware/protocols and
didn't integrate with their current environment at all. This year they are
moving to Chromebooks and my hope is that Nearby Connections might provide an
"open" foundation on which a new breed of apps can be built.

------
mataug
This is basically Air Drop with extra features and an open API .

As @pat2man mentions, It would've been great if Apple and Google made this an
open standard instead of having their own proprietary solutions.

~~~
reaperducer
It's amazing how much things have changed since AirDrop. In the last two
offices in which I've worked (both creative), AirDrop was indispensable. Even
in a small team of 20 or so people, it was used hundreds of times a day.

The new Apple era has strayed considerably from "it just works," except for
AirDrop, which has been nothing but a pleasure to work with.

~~~
ksec
Can you describe the workflow of using AirDrop? Because for some reason
AirDrop never really clicked for me. It is far too many layers or options
before i get it across devices.

And I assume you are all using Mac?

Because In Cooperate World it is pretty much Windows Only.

~~~
reaperducer
In Corporate World of the 1990's it was pretty much Windows Only. Much of the
corporate world has moved on, largely spurred by managers adopting iPhones.

The last two companies I worked for — a creative agency with ~50 people, and a
larger more anonymous company with ~2,000 employees in 10 states — both were
100% Mac. The first one, because that's how creative agencies have always
been. The second for security. The IT dept's policy was no Microsoft hardware
or software allowed other than Office: Mac.

As for the workflow, it's like this:

\- See file on desktop. \- Right-click and select "Airdrop" \- Choose
destination computer \- Notification appears on target computer stating that
someone wants to send a file \- Destination user clicks "Accept" \- File
transmits super-duper fast in the background and lands in the destination
computer's download folder

Or if you're sending a file to yourself (both devices have the same
iCloud/.mac/.me ID) skip everything after the third step.

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natch
We need a net neutrality version of this, not networks built for specific
verticals like weather alerts.

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dsun179
I hate google for things like this. "Dont be evil" they said. But why do they
hate freedom?

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brndnmtthws
No thank you. I hope there's a simple way to disable this.

~~~
spydum
Can't wait for the peer to peer mobile malware!

~~~
blacksmith_tb
No need to wait, the recently announced Broadcom wifi vuln discussed here[1]
can be used to spread to nearby devices (see the section titled "The First
Wifi Worm" near the end).

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859602)

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samer66
In 2014 there was MeshMe, an Ad-Hoc Mesh Networks it disappeared shortly
afterwards. [https://hacked.com/meshme-messaging-
app/](https://hacked.com/meshme-messaging-app/)

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thadk
Wherein Google realizes it needs AirDrop for its self driving cars too.

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exit
hopefully this will accelerate development and adoption of ipfs based apps!
[https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

