neat. it seems that sputnik’s new access point communicates with the control panel using the jabber protocol:

“Central Control and the Sputnik APs interact using the open-source Jabber IM protocol. Using XML streams, the controller and APs exchange authenticated, encrypted messages that allow the controller to sense the presence of newly installed access points, pass them configuration info, and detect problems on the WLAN. Proxim and Cisco are also looking at including XML communication protocols in future versions of their controllers.”

put enough space on the ap to offer a few other lan services, throw in some multicast dns [ a.k.a rendezvous ] and you’ve got something interesting.