[MLB-WIRELESS] meshing

[Clae]

So perhaps we are eventually looking at a two-tier network, one tier 
for simple clients (leaf nodes?)  and one for a robust, redundant 
mesh-like backbone network, as outlined in the SeattleWireless 
article.  This would provide for two levels of individual interest 
and involvement too - and investment.

The only immediately obvious advantage that an amateur like me can 
see with a universal mesh network is that every time an antenna goes 
up, the network is extended.  And IIRC redundancy builds bandwidth?

I imagine that the packet-clog that an individual might experience 
could be weighed against the advantage of being able to help their 
mates further up the valley to join in.  I can just imagine the 
frustration of someone who has spent a largish amount of money under 
the impression he/she will be able to do this, only to find that they 
can't.

Clae.

<<< heavily snipped original >>>
From: Andrew Harcourt <gfg687472609 at geckomail.org>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 12:22:50 +1100

>  ...thoughts that at some stage we are going to have a mesh
>  network.  By that I mean that nodes will be able to pass
>  packets along from one to the other...

..If person B is smack bang between persons A and C, they're going to do a lot
of packet forwarding. If person M is between persons A-L on one side and N-Z
on the other, they are going to be doing an *extreme* amount of packet
forwarding...

I think that this kind of approach will quickly swamp the geographically
centralised nodes and cause their maintainers to lose interest...

Contrast this with a backbone-style setup....The routing issues will 
have to be sorted out a little more thoroughly, but it will give us 
more overall bandwidth to play with ...

IMHO we're going to end up with two main types of nodes: 1) leaf nodes and
2) everything else.

Leaf nodes ...wouldn't need any kind of routing hardware or software 
- just run them as an Ethernet bridge ... This is the simplest way we 
can get
other people involved - they only have to buy a single piece of hardware, it
comes in a box and they can just plug it in and connect.

Other nodes are going to have to handle a few more routing issues and the
odds are that we'll have to run a decent OS such as Linux or *BSD ...

Regards,
Andrew

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