>> I thought mesh networking might have functionality built in to manage >> the channel selection and power setting of the AP by performing an >> automatic wireless survey on power up. If this were the case you >> could run a cable to each one and have an easy to configure high >> density solution. > > There are definitely devices that can do the channel selection, in > fact, I think most APs come with the feature. Certainly all the Apple > devices do it, and if I recall it's a feature in DD-WRT and similar > firmwares you can put on Linux based devices. Some of those might > configure the power settings as well.
Such a distributed survey only works so well. An optimal solution (as compared to a greedy suboptimal solution) requires coordination between the APs. It requires that each AP take a turn sounding the medium while the others listen and then channels are assigned to minimize expected interference. Instead, what you suggest has a bunch of APs listening to each others beacons and then greedily choosing a channel which seems best to them. This will only generate optimal solutions for trivial configurations. Also, if they are configured to periodically change their channel this way, you can have all kinds of channel flapping which would cause real usage issues. This is one case where you can not be effectively replaced by a small shell script. Having a human pay attention to the environment and then come up with a channel plan on a piece of paper isn't that hard and probably works quite well (assuming there aren't unseen sources of interference, etc.). http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=wireless%20channel%20assignment -- Caleb --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
