Mesh was certainly the conclusion we reached after working out the logistics of a modest community network, especially with non-technical members.
Our goal, after trying one, was to use an outdoor rubberized utility box which included its own plainer antenna with modest gain. The idea is to make it so simple to mount on the side of the house that by simply supplying it with the POE connection, it would configure itself and be a node on the network. Mesh networking was not widely working yet, and the key problem not solved was "bonding" multiple land lines in different homes. The hope was that as individuals within the mesh gained land-line broadband, they'd still want to stay on the wireless WAN because it would both offer increased bandwidth and a fallback when their broadband failed. Mesh is clearly the best way to go if you can get the software into whatever AP used. BTW: La Canada Wireless is a very effective community network: http://www.lcwireless.com/MainPage.html .. they don't yet use mesh, they've been in place for years and thus would face a huge conversion process. They helped us understand the difficulties/joys of a community network, and had all the war stories you could want! :) -- Owen On Jan 28, 2008, at 6:38 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > Owen Densmore wrote: >> basically a way to lash together >> several users sharing a T1 or similar broadband wired access. > You may want to take a look at Sveasoft's Talisman/Mesh firmware.. > > "Talisman/Mesh supports the following features - > > 1) Automatic discovery of neighbor mesh nodes > 2) Automatic address assignment among mesh nodes > 3) Automatic routing and route distribution > 4) Automatic distribution of nameservers > 5) Automatic distribution of hostnames > > Talisman/Mesh is designed to solve a series of issues that make > deployment of wide area wireless networks problematic. Normally > wireless > networks with more than a single AP require manual linking, IP address > assignment, routing, and there is little or no failover. > > Talisman/Mesh is designed to allow spontaneous creation of wireless > networks with 2 or more AP nodes with a minimum of setup and > maintenance. " > > Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
