[MLB-WIRELESS] [TIB] A new offer has been added to TIB -23/01/2003

[Donovan Baarda]

On Fri, 2003-01-24 at 11:55, Fenn Bailey wrote:
[...]
> There are some fairly important issues. These cannot do IBSS (ad-hoc)
> mode, so anyone in your area who wants to go ad-hoc with an omni won't
> be able to connect to you. They would be restricted to go to BSS as a
> client, which means they cannot 'pass-on' their connectivity to anyone
> else without a second interface. Unless of course they have an AP that
> supports some sort of multipoint bridging (I don't even know if that's
> possible).

My brief research since this was posted suggest that this is pretty
critical. As I understand it, this means a wireless mesh can only be
built using nodes in ad-hoc mode, or perhaps using AP's that support
point-to-multi-point bridging. You cannot build a mesh using a mixture
of these, as they can't talk to each other.

It seems most AP's can't do ad-hoc, and most WNIC's can't do
point-to-multi-point bridging. It is also possible that bridging modes
only work between AP's of the same type. This means AP's are not much
good for a mesh.

This makes it pretty critical that melb-wireless should recommend IBSS,
and hence discorage AP's, for nodes that want to become part of a mesh.

Can someone please correct me if I've missed something. Putting a $125
AP up a pole is cheaper and more convenient than $60 WNIC + $88 PCMCIA
cradle + $40 486PC in the roof.

-- 
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