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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Oh god no. Mobile networks ARE NOT designed to handle torrent type traffic. You will destroy RF bandwidth at towers, as well as backhauls. The best iOS update methods are still "push notify update available to client, fetch over wifi when plugged in and screen locked" and if after a significant amount of time the download doesn't occur, only then fallback to a cellular download directly from the CDN, still at night when usage is extremely low.

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Isn't this why frequency bands that equipped citizens cannot legally forward information among a mesh network?

Plus, as far as phones uploading to other phones, regardless of package signing and other security, no one would appreciate unsolicited battery life depletion.

I remember this discussion coming up with GoTenna [1] here, where they admitted it would be a nice feature to communicate beyond single point to point transceivers like a mesh network but the FCC stipulates these open bands cannot be used like that.

[1]: http://www.gotenna.com/

no. this is a limitation specific to MURS, from their explaination[0]. MURS band is cooler for them though because of longer lamdba. but the longer lambda = further propagation / power (a general rule anyway). so, FCC would rather not have long propagation (at least that is what it looks like.. don't know when the rules were put into place, the process, etc to say for sure).

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8054336

Why couldn't "fetch over wifi" use torrent type traffic from other wifi based users?

You could, but between how inexpensive CDN bandwidth is when purchased in bulk, along with Apple's desire to control a user's experience so its always positive, a torrent swarm doesn't make sense.

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