One of these, in Long Beach, Calif., used PacketHop's products for a simulated homeland security exercise at Long Beach Airport earlier this year. This approach was particularly valuable in this case because it provided a single, unified, multimedia network that could be set up quickly and that could dynamically and quickly adapt to any situation, no matter how the focus of activity moved geographically.

This same technique could be applied to commercial and enterprise applications as well. Imagine, for example, every car being a dynamic mesh node, and the amount of capacity that this technology would create on and near almost every road. Imagine being able to cover a corporate campus, providing access to vehicles and buildings alike.

Eventually, fixed and dynamic meshes will merge, but that's a topic for another column. In the meantime, keep your eye on this concept -- it's going to become very important over the next few years.