"Our motivation for developing this is broadband connection to share in a disaster-relief situation," says Santosh Vempala, Georgia Tech computer science professor, who with university grad students Ashwin Paranjpe and Hrushikesh Mehendale worked on developing the LifeNet "Flexible Routing" protocol. The protocol is getting a workout in a campus research project that uses it on Wi-Fi-enabled, portable laptops to set up an instant ad-hoc mobile network for data-sharing among LifeNet-enabled devices.

Each LifeNet-enabled-computer acts as both a host client and a router, able to directly route data to and from any other available LifeNet wireless device, Vempala says, and "if any device has Internet connectivity, they all have it."

While the idea sounds simple, there are significant challenges in developing any kind of blended client/router technology for wireless because devices are constantly getting turned on and off and moved around.

"The paths are changing rapidly," Vempala points out, noting each device has to have a way to know what others on the LifeNet-enabled network are doing and what amount of data can actually get through.

Vempala, who started work on the Flexible Routing protocol about three years ago, says it's open source and available for public use by downloading the software at , (which stands for My Mobile Ad-Hoc Network) where version 2.3 is available and 3.0 is expected to be posted next month. Vempala said he welcomes feedback from anyone else trialing it.