I've been thinking/coding/experimenting with what I call DMCP (Dynamic Moteino Configuration Protocol. It is based on DHCP and is designed to provide dynamic node configuration to Moteino's over wireless. I'm trying to decide if this is just something fun to code or could it have any useful applications in the "real" world. Right now I have a client and server where the clients are loaded with a small sketch which sends out a request for configuration data. Right now this only includes a node ID and network, but could easily include one or more encryption keys, application-specific parameters, etc. I reserve a pool of node ID's so each node picks a random number inside the reserved pool to make the initial request. There are obvious differences between DHCP in a TCP/IP world and Moteino's in a wireless world so I'm balancing features with code size, execution speeds, etc.
In my mind I see folks buying lots of Moteino's from Felix with this stub code auto-loaded on each device. Once you program the gateway (much like configuring DHCP scopes) you simply turn on the clients and they get their configuration information over the wireless network. Since you can provide the network and encryption keys you could create lots of smaller networks at around 250 nodes per network.
My ideal solution would take this one step further and allow the client to actually download new code over the wireless network. I'm not that far along to see if this is viable but it sounds cool in my head. Each client could either get a generic program or it could request a specific code download (ie, I'm a temperature sensor node with a DHT-11).
So, since I respect the opinions of all of the members out there who have lots more experience than I do with MCU's and Moteino's in specifics, what do you think? Cool idea but useless for real-world applications? Neat, but not practical? Thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated.