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>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.

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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.

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