There was a problem with this at an Apple World-Wide Developer Conference a few years ago (2001?). Most people had the titanium (e.g Faraday Cage) powerbooks,

There was a problem with this at an Apple World-Wide Developer Conference a few years ago (2001?). Most people had the titanium (e.g Faraday Cage) powerbooks, and had terrible problems with the wireless. So, when people couldn't connect to the wireless network, they would try to connect "manually," which sometimes meant they'd accidentally create a new network with the same name. The ad-hoc network grew pretty quickly from there.