[guardian-dev] GilgaMesh (was Re: FireChat moved off iOS proprietary mesh to their own xp mesh protocol?)

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Michael Rogers wrote:
> On 02/10/14 21:07, Chris Ballinger wrote:
>> However, I think it would be beneficial to utilize other transports
>> for Android<-->Android and iOS<-->iOS for increased overall range /
>> mesh quality. The iOS MultipeerConnectivity framework uses Wifi /
>> Bluetooth in a proprietary/closed way and will never interoperate
>> with Android (by design). Android supports Wifi Direct in a more
>> open fashion, but it will never interoperate with iOS because Apple
>> likes to be stubborn.
> 
> Someone reverse-engineered the wifi parts of the Multipeer
> Connectivity Framework - it's a combination of Bonjour for service
> discovery, self-signed X.509 certs for mutual auth, and DTLS with a
> magic byte prepended for data transfer. It should be possible to
> create a compatible Android library.
> 
> https://nabla-c0d3.github.io/blog/2014/08/20/multipeer-connectivity-follow-up/
> 
> I don't have time to work on this right now, but it would make a good
> Masters project.

This sounds like the most promising approach for device-to-device transfer.
If there is a decent chance of making a cross-platform compatibility library,
then we have a proven technology on Android as well.  And based on your
summary, it sounds like it is based on open standards (Bonjour, X509, DTLS).

Anyone seen anything about the WiFi mode it uses?  If Apple uses adhoc mode,
which every major OS but Android supports, we're screwed.

.hc

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