I see that a company in Sweden has created new firmware for the Linksys WRT54G.
http://www.sveasoft.com/modules.php?f=6&name=Forums&file=viewforum
Has anybody looked at creating a meshing firmware? I mean, it seems like the ultimate WLAN device is one which you bring home from the store, unpack, place where it has line of sight to your neighbors, turn on, and it joins the mesh. Okay, so until Linksys wises up, there's going to be a "download firmware from website; upgrade firmware" step in there, but still. We have the technology; why hasn't anybody integrated it yet? Or am I wrong in thinking that this goal is a good thing?
I did quite a lot of research into MeshAP a while ago and reached the conclusion that Mesh in general is distinctly non-trivial. One of the hardest problems to solve is IP allocation and addressing.
As Broadband usage grows, I'm reaching the conclusion that what we should be aiming for is ubiquitous internet access and graceful handoff between APs, rather than specifically mesh. If most APs have a broadband connection then there's few benefits from meshing them together. One interesting one is aggregating the bandwidth together for burstable higher speed, but that's also hard to arrange.
Having said all that Mesh still looks good for remote areas where internet access is expensive. If you're getting one high speed line in and then sharing it round the community, mesh works pretty well. But in that scenario, the difference between a $100 hacked WRT and a $400 dedicated mesh box is less important as you really need the extra control in the dedicated design.
My hope for the WRT hacking is to come up with something that makes it easy, cheap and safe to share your bandwidth. But even this may become irrelevant as the "Vendor Defaults Community Network" is everywhere. ;-)
-- Julian Bond Email&MSM: julian.bond at voidstar.com Webmaster: http://www.ecademy.com/ Personal WebLog: http://www.voidstar.com/ M: +44 (0)77 5907 2173 T: +44 (0)192 0412 433 -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
