Source: {"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"}

People are dependent on Internet-connected computers and mobile phones, which in turn are reliant on central infrastructure in the form of the internet (e.g., domain name servers) and cell towers, respectively to operate. If any kind of scenario arises where that central infrastructure is unavailable or suffering degraded performance, the computers and mobile phones are not able to communicate with other computers and mobile phones.
Smartphones integrate a broad range of communication functions with general purpose computational capabilities. Further, smartphones can also route and bridge communications between different communication bands and protocols, and thus can provide Internet connectivity and service to other devices.
Two distinct types of ubiquitous wireless data communication networks have developed: cellular telephone networks having a maximum range of about 20-50 miles line of sight or 3 miles in hilly terrain, and short-range local-area computer networks (wireless local-area networks or WLANs) having a maximum range of about 0.2 miles (˜1000 feet IEEE-802.11n 2.4 GHz) outdoors line of sight. First, the cellular infrastructure for wireless telephony involves long-distance communication between mobile phones and central basestations, where the basestations are typically linked to tall cell towers, connecting to the public switched telephone network and the Internet. The radio band for these long-range wireless networks is typically a regulated, licensed band, and the network is managed to combine both broad bandwidth (˜5-20 MHz) and many simultaneous users. This should be contrasted with a short-range wireless computer network, which may link multiple users to a central router or hub, which router may itself have a wired connection to the Internet. A key example is Wi-Fi, which is managed according to the IEEE-802.11x communications standards, with a data rate theoretically over 1 gigabit per second (802.11ac) and a range that is typically much less than 100 m. Other known standard examples are known by the terms Bluetooth and ZigBee. The radio band for a WLAN is typically an unlicensed band, such as one of the ISM bands (industrial, scientific, and medical), or more recently, a whitespace band formerly occupied by terrestrial analog television (WSLAN). One implication of such an unlicensed band is the unpredictable presence of significant interference due to other classes of users, which tends to limit either the range, or the bandwidth, or both. For such local area networks, a short range (low power and high modulation rates) becomes advantageous for high rates of spatial band reuse and acceptable levels of interference.
Ad hoc networks or mesh networks are also known. These protocols permit peer-to-peer communications between devices over a variety of frequency bands, and a range of capabilities. In a multihop network, communications are passed from one node to another in series between the source and destination. Because of various risks, as the number of hops grows, the reliability of a communication successfully reaching its destination decreases, such that hop counts of more than 10 or 20 in a mobility permissive network are rarely considered feasible. A typical mesh network protocol maintains a routing table at each node, which is then used to control the communication. This routing table may be established proactively or reactively. In proactive routing, the network state information is pushed to the various nodes, often appended to other communications, such that when a communication is to be established, the nodes rely on the then-current routing information to control the communication. This paradigm suffers from the possibility of stale or incorrect routing information or overly burdensome administrative overhead, or both. Reactive routing seeks to determine the network state at the time of, and for the purpose of, a single communication, and therefore may require significant communications possibly far exceeding the amount of data to be communicated in order to establish a link. Because the network state is requested at the time of communication, there is less opportunity to piggyback the administrative information on other communications. There are also various hybrid ad hoc network routing protocols, which seek to compromise between these two strategies, and other paradigms as well. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. and Pub. Patent Appl. Nos. 6,584,080; 6,625,135; 6,628,620; 6,718,394; 6,754,192; 6,763,013; 6,763,014; 6,870,846; 6,894,985; 6,898,529; 6,906,741; 6,954,435; 6,961,310; 6,975,614; 6,977,608; 6,986,161; 7,007,102; 7,027,426; 7,028,687; 7,068,600; 7,068,605; 7,075,919; 7,079,552; 7,082,117; 7,085,290; 7,096,037; 7,142,866; 7,170,425; 7,176,807; 7,216,282; 7,251,238; 7,266,085; 7,281,057; 7,299,038; 7,299,042; 7,308,369; 7,308,370; 7,317,898; 7,327,998; 7,346,167; 7,348,895; 7,356,001; 7,362,711; 7,366,111; 7,366,544; 7,382,765; 7,389,295; 7,394,798; 7,394,826; 7,418,238; 7,420,944; 7,427,927; 7,428,221; 7,450,517; 7,453,864; 7,457,834; 7,468,954; 7,480,248; 7,495,578; 7,529,561; 7,535,883; 7,536,388; 7,539,759; 7,545,285; 7,567,577; 7,580,730; 7,580,782; 7,581,095; 7,587,001; 7,590,589; 7,599,696; 7,602,738; 7,616,961; 7,656,851; 7,657,354; 7,660,318; 7,660,950; 7,678,068; 7,693,484; 7,695,446; 7,702,594; 7,706,282; 7,706,842; 7,710,932; 7,719,988; 7,725,080; 7,729,336; 7,742,399; 7,742,430; 7,746,794; 7,753,795; 7,764,617; 7,778,235; 7,788,387; 7,808,985; 7,813,451; 7,817,623; 7,830,820; 7,843,861; 7,849,139; 7,852,826; 7,860,025; 7,860,081; 7,860,968; 7,873,019; 7,881,474; 7,886,075; 7,894,828; 7,898,993; 7,902,973; 7,905,640; 7,912,645; 7,924,796; 7,929,914; 7,936,732; 7,941,188; 7,944,878; 7,957,355; 7,961,650; 7,962,101; 7,962,154; 7,969,914; 7,970,418; 7,974,402; 7,978,062; 7,979,311; 7,983,835; 7,990,947; 7,996,558; 8,035,479; 8,040,863; 8,042,048; 8,059,620; 8,060,017; 8,060,308; 8,065,166; 8,065,411; 8,072,906; 8,073,384; 8,090,596; 8,099,108; 8,099,307; 8,108,228; 8,108,429; 8,115,617; 8,121,628; 8,121,870; 8,130,708; 8,131,569; 8,131,838; 8,134,950; 8,135,362; 8,138,934; 8,139,504; 8,144,596; 8,144,619; 8,151,140; 8,161,097; 8,170,577; 8,170,957; 8,171,364; 8,174,381; 8,180,294; 8,184,681; 8,195,483; 8,195,628; 8,200,246; 8,203,463; 8,213,895; 8,239,169; 8,249,984; 8,256,681; 8,266,657; 8,271,449; 8,275,824; 8,289,182; 8,289,186; 8,300,615; 8,311,533; 8,315,231; 8,319,658; 8,319,833; 8,320,302; 8,320,414; 8,323,189; 8,325,612; 8,330,649; 8,332,055; 8,334,787; 8,335,207; 8,335,