[MLB-WIRELESS] meshing

[Langdon Stevenson]

Having read that article it put me in mind of a mobile phone cell network 
and roaming...

Langdon

>I really do like the Seattle Wireless philosophy, the link posted by Drew is
>particularly pertinent once again:
>http://seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/PointToPoint
>
> > > I have this impression, that somewhere in the back of our
> > > collective, Melbwireless hivemind, we have these vague
> > > 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, hippity-hopping their
> > > way from one side of Melbourne to the other.
> >
> > I don't have time right now to write a full response to this,
> > but I doubt
> > this is such a wonderful goal to aspire to.
> >
> > 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 - hey,
> > wouldn't you do the same if you couldn't get a single packet
> > of your own
> > out? Sure, you can use traffic shaping and a whole bunch of
> > QoS rules, but
> > at the end of the day if you're forwarding heaps of traffic
> > for others and
> > not getting much out of it yourself, you'll start to lose enthusiasm.
> >
> > Contrast this with a backbone-style setup. I'm sure there are a few
> > (dedicated? altruistic? bloody minded?) folk around who are
> > happy to run a
> > few point-to-point links as a backbone and then hang other
> > branch nodes off
> > them. The routing issues will have to be sorted out a little more
> > thoroughly, but it will give us more overall bandwidth to
> > play with if we
> > use a backbone-style topology.
> >
> > > I think this is something we need to discuss if it is to be
> > > a long-range goal for the network.  Maybe we can make
> > > provisions in advance for this capability at geographically
> > > significant sites. This would prevent us from investing in
> > > unsuitable hardware, and cursing that choice down the road.
> >
> > IMHO we're going to end up with two main types of nodes: 1)
> > leaf nodes and
> > 2) everything else.
> >
> > Leaf nodes could probably (quite happily) use a normal AP
> > plugged straight
> > into an Ethernet hub to connect to a branch node with an
> > omni. Leaf nodes
> > wouldn't need any kind of routing hardware or software - just
> > run them as an
> > Ethernet bridge and all should be well. 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 (no
> > religious flames please) on the routing nodes.
> >
> > Out of time - have to go. If anyone else has thoughts on the
> > matter, please
> > yell out.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Andrew
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------
> > Andrew Harcourt
> > Telstra Research Laboratories
> >
> > +61392536210 (office)
> > +61409723311 (mobile)
> > andrew.harcourt at team.telstra.com
> > --------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
> >
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