Martin Peck, Janus Wireless Project

Martin Peck brings an altogether new meaning to the concept of Internet traffic. In late February, he and fellow members of the Janus Wireless Project — the Portland, Ore.-based Wi-Fi enthusiast group Peck co-founded in March 2002 — masterminded the Wi-Fi Caravan. On a road trip from Portland to San Francisco's CodeCon '03 event, the Wi-Fi Caravan proved that it was possible to establish and maintain an 802.11 wireless network among a convoy of vehicles traveling down the highway.

“We thought it would be fun if we set up a network between vehicles to use [Internet Relay Chat], share music and watch videos,” said Peck, who by day is a quality assurance engineer for service provider Metro One Telecommunications. So last November, he and his Janus colleagues began preparing for the 14-hour drive, creating and tweaking the necessary software; chip developer VIA Technologies donated additional hardware.

But there were bumps in the road: Although Peck's original plan called for a procession of four or five cars that would create a network link extending several miles, only two cars were able to make the journey, with a third joining much later on. There were also technical glitches. “Everything that could go wrong did,” Peck said. “We hit a lot of the snags you could possibly run into, from power demands to needing spare equipment.”

The Wi-Fi Caravan wasn't merely a stunt, however. Its success proved a theory that's been floating about the wireless community for some time: By installing 802.11 equipment in enough motor vehicles, it's possible to create a roaming wireless network that would effectively blanket the nation — each car would serve as a repeater node, whether it was speeding through traffic or parked in its owner's garage. “That's the beauty of connectivity,” Peck said. “It's a whole new community network that everyone implicitly participates in.”

With many of the kinks now ironed out, Peck is planning another Wi-Fi Caravan for later this year. “For everything that went wrong, the message is still intact: Commodity wireless networking really does have the capabilities to do this,” he said. “The possibilities are wide open.”