Cell-hopping: A new architecture for wireless communications

Recent advances in IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standards have led to unprecedented opportunities for commercial success and low pricing in wireless networking. Wireless access points that are easy to setup, use, and maintain, have become a household commodity. Inspired by the added benefit of their operation in the unlicensed frequency band, many home and small business owners are installing these commodity access points to quickly set up a high speed local wireless network within their premises. As this trend continues to grow, we will soon end up with a wide coverage of independent commodity access points in residential or commercial areas serving individual premises. Although these access points serve their intended purpose of networking indoor devices, they themselves do not provide any wide area communication services to mobile users.