Once this experimental protocol base is established, the working group will move on to design and develop a mobile ad-hoc network, common, group-engineered routing specification similar to the Internet Standards track. Experience gained from existing proposals will be used as design input, however, rather than choosing any specific scheme as a point of focus, the ultimate goal will be to achieve standardization of various schemes.

As a part of this ongoing effort, the working group will also address the aspects of security and congestion control in the already proposed routing protocols. This group will work closely with the IRTF (Internet Research Task Force) and other groups on mobile ad-hoc networks to collect any further developments from the related research community. In summary, the founding of such a group is a progressive step. Although it might be a bit early to predict any thing about the overall success of this group, we hope that if successful, we'll see more generalized and discrete forms of products based on the mobile ad-hoc network.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.