Bluetooth SIG, the group that oversees the Bluetooth standard, is today releasing the specification for Bluetooth Mesh. If you’re familiar with mesh networking, Bluetooth Mesh is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: it allows low-power Bluetooth devices to create and act like a mesh network.
If you’re not familiar with mesh networking, here’s what it means: most wireless communications go straight from one point to another — say, from your router to your laptop and back again. If your laptop is too far out of range, then you’re just out of luck.
But mesh networks have a useful trick to help data travel longer distances: communications can hop between devices. So if a signal can’t reach its destination on the first try, another device on the network can re-transmit the message, sending it out even farther in hopes of finding the device it’s trying to get in touch with. And this can happen again and again, until the message finally gets where it needs to go.
