I have been watching the development of the Serval Project with great interest and note that this week they have released their first Android app to Market (https://market.android.com/details?i...=search_result). Given that our N900's can run Froyo and now Gingerbread I'm wondering if anyone has installed this yet? I am aware that Nitdroid doesn't yet do telephony but this app works via WiFi and may circumvent the problems? While bypassing the 'Network' one is able to make calls via this software directly...phone to phone... sans telco (as long as the phones are within WiFi range)! Obviously the more people opt in to such an adhoc network the better it works and the further the data packets are able hop! The implications of such development are immense especially when telephony infrastructure is compromised and the requirement for communication is at a premium (read.. disaster scenarios etc. etc.). If all phones were thusly capable would we need the telcos at all?

PS. It seems as though Nitdroid now runs very well ( thanks to those involved) so I will give it a fly….and load the Serval software….but I'll be silent until others do too!

PSS. I know the Serval people were looking at the N900 (and iOS) as a possible platform for this and some work was done…I wonder if it could be ported to run natively?

PSSS! Renamed the thread…BUMP!

Mark

Nobody interested?

I was excited when I first heard about this. Kinda disappointed that it uses the wifi radio instead of the cellular radio. But I guess that would be difficult to implement. Have you tried it yet? I assume I won't be able to make calls until some critical mass of people in my area have it installed.

Using the cellular radio would be downright impossible.

1. it operates on licensed frequencies.

2. the basic design is one where most or all the smarts are in the base stations. Contrast this to WIFI where every device can operate as a ad-hoc hotspot if so wanted.

GPRS+UTMS-data connections?
Many ppl have flat rate data access and could be routing traffic in the selval mesh net.

What i am saying is that handsets are not designed, nor allowed, to operate as cellular towers.

I actually didn't get what you can with this thing...

Any explanation within the first post will be usefull I think

Apparently the range of Serval is "a few hundred meters" so a better solution than using your cell phone battery would be to walk over there and talk to them.

At that range you might even just be able to yell at them, or wave your hands.

I think they are going for a mesh network of sorts, so that each persons device acts as a relay.

So how is this not open to MITM attacks? Seems like security is not really a priority for this project.