[MLB-WIRELESS] roaming between 2 AP's?

[Kim Hawtin]

Charles Wyble wrote:
> Michael Vale wrote:
>> Mesh's are a good idea, and maybe ok in this small scenario, but in a 
>> real case scenario, they are terribly slow, from one side of the mesh 
>> to the other you'll be lucky to get any better than dial-up speeds.  
>> sorry to say, but it is true.
> 
> So can you qualify that?
> 
> What software was used?
> What hardware?
> What type of radios/antennas?
> How many nodes?
> How recent was this experience?
> 
> You made a blanket statement, and I tend to react to any blanket 
> statement with a request for information. :)

Its not my experience what mesh networks are orders of magnitude
slower than the interfaces on the wifi devices.

I have used MobileMesh (years ago on the Consume.X project) and
more recently OLSRd. Meshes using OLSRd can be made to be very
fast like BGP, like any other sensibly designed network.

If you put every AP on the same channel in a small space you
are bound to get collisions and congestion.

Multi radio routers or pairs of APs linked by wired ethernet,
can yield quite good results. I've used the WRT54G and R100
specifically. Other modern small routers work equally well.

Using directional antenna also helps to reduce the radio noise.
Try using sectors or patch antenna to cover specific areas of
clients or other mesh nodes. Amusingly folks find simple ways
to solve these kind of problems;
  http://www.tritium.co.uk/Flatennaroot.htm

Have a look at OWN; http://own.spc.org/drupal/

If you're not into OLSRd then maybe you might be interested in
B.AT.M.A.N.; https://www.open-mesh.net/ or even BGP!

And if you're into store bought solutions; http://open-mesh.com/store/

regards,

Kim
-- 
Operating Systems, Services and Operations
Information Technology Services, The University of Adelaide
kim.hawtin at adelaide.edu.au