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One of the most important factors when discussing networking is topology. In basic terms, the topology describes how the various members (nodes) of a network are connected together. Most small networks (your office, your home) use a star topology, with a central node (a switch/router) connected to a bunch of clients (your laptop, smartphone, Xbox, etc.) The star topology dictates that if one client wants to talk to another (say, you want to send a photo from your laptop to your Xbox), the data must go through the central point (the router). The internet, in case you're wondering, because it's

The key reason for mesh networking being exciting is that it doesn't require centralized infrastructure. If you turn off your WiFi router, chances are your entire home network would cease to work. If you had a mesh network instead, everything would continue to work just fine (assuming they're still within range of each other, anyway). If you've used Miracast/WiDi to stream video directly from your smartphone/laptop to your TV, then you've already dabbled in mesh networking. And so we finally get to iOS 7's mesh networking capabilities, which Apple refers to as Multipeer Connectivity(Opens in a