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Wireless Networking Communications Hardware

Meshcube: A New Mesh-Routing Wireless Device 124

Posted by timothy from the edge-cases dept.
jazzgroove writes "The Meshcube is a new wireless mesh routing device based on open source technologies. It's quite feature rich with support for VPN and IPSEC which come from the meshcube distribution. Apparently you can buy the device as a kit and build it yourself or buy it pre-built. For more information have a look at the wiki."
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Meshcube: A New Mesh-Routing Wireless Device More

Meshcube: A New Mesh-Routing Wireless Device

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  • Nice.. but expensive! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) * on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:35AM (#9558745) Journal
    For those of us in the US

    "Especially for communities we offer the meshcube as a kit which can easily be assembled. Prices start at 199,90 EUR. The kit comes without antennas to allow highest flexibility to the lowest possible price."

    = $241.98

    "For those who want to start meshing right away this true linux-device can also be ordered readily assembled - prices starting at 239,90 EUR."

    = $290.62

    Calculated as of this morning.

    • Good point, and that limits its usefulness for truly disruptive technology. An opportunistic anon remailer, for example. The meshcube would do well at this, but that application really demands disposable hardware. (after all, when whomever the unit is leeching bandwidth from finds it, it's not likely to survive the encounter) $300 per isn't quite disposable. $100 might be, but I haven't seen any very small form factor systems that hit the price point.
    • OTOH, prices of electronics tend to drop. If somebody decides to push this, then the price could drop a LOT. If somebody builds it on a chip (it looks like a v.small board), then it might become ubiquitous...(of course, that means that it MUST be totally software configurable).

      So, not this year...but setting up a small mesh could be a (relatively) cheap project. And if it lead to a product that rolled out the door...prices would drop fast.

      Uses...Uses... Well, ok. Imagine a Beowulf cluster hooked toget

  • Okay, I get the idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matey-O ( 518004 ) <michaeljohnmiller@mSPAMsSPAMnSPAM.com> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:41AM (#9558763) Homepage Journal
    And can see the potential disruptive technology here, but what's this good for?

    (yeah yeah, buy a bunch and have connectivity everywhere, but a) not at $250 a piece, and b) not by joe sixpack)

    Right now, it doesn't seem to add more to the picture than a $70 Linksys WRT54g. (and THAT at least has a 4 port switch along with the broadcom chipset)

    • Re:Okay, I get the idea (Score:3, Informative)

      by teemu.s ( 677447 ) *
      64 MB Ram, PoE (802.3af), smaller dimensions, 400 MHz Mips CPU ..

      • Re:Okay, I get the idea (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        More importantly, an optional second Wifi interface: One for a backbone, one for clients.
        • Personally, I was thinking a solar panel, a battery, a charging circuit, and two dinty moore stew can antennas. With a string of these suckers you should be able to run a nice fast network up into the boonies, just find places to put them for repeaters, and it should only cost you about $500 per unit, for ten miles' range. Of course you need a post at each end of the fence, but even so. This is an ideal way to construct private point to point wireless networks on the cheap. If you add a crypto card (availab

    • Re:Okay, I get the idea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LondonLawyer ( 609870 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:54AM (#9558810) Journal
      Pretty much what I was thinking. The 'London Wireless State of Play' story which was on Slashdot a few weeks back had some interesting geek density calculations which help explain why the Consume mesh project hasn't really taken off here yet. Kits like this need to be cheap to buy and easy to use so that they can become ubiquitous. This doesn't look to be either.

    • Re:Okay, I get the idea (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:33AM (#9558961) Homepage Journal
      along with the broadcom chipset

      Unless you are a fan of broadcom or something, I don't see how this is necessarily a selling point.

      This meshcube does have a pile of miniPCI slots which I think would be useful for many point-to-point relays to set up a mesh (one for service, four for connecting to adjacent lattice points) in contrast, a similar setup using that model Linksys would require five of them.

    • Re:Okay, I get the idea (Score:5, Informative)

      by div_2n ( 525075 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:39AM (#9558989)
      Because Mesh can reduce the cost of proliferating wireless access over any area even and especially in a building and provide for high levels of administration. Consider:

      -Mesh nodes have the power to be aware of other nodes and auto power so they don't cause excessive interference with each other.

      -You only have to deploy one piece of equipment to spread the signal instead of running wires to the new location and/or having a wireless bridge connected to an AP.

      -It is scalable and upgradable. You only need swap wireless devices or add in a new one to take advantage of new wireless technologies and/or have multiple frequencies in one device.

      -They are completely flexible so that you can setup any network topology you want as opposed to off the shelf WAP's that are extremely limited in ability.

      -The flexibility allows for amazing abilities to monitor and control all functions and activities on the APs.

      -You control whether there are backdoor accounts.

      That should get you started.

    • Re:Okay, I get the idea (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tarwn ( 458323 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:44AM (#9559007) Homepage
      Think wireless in large areas. You set up a mesh network over a square mile or more and you want to make sure that even if a device or two goes down someone would still be able to make a connection (self-healing as it were). Thats where wireless mesh networking comes into play.
      Obviously you wouldn't have the need for this type of equipment in your home anymore than I would try to go out and setup up a large wireless MAN with Linksys home units...unless you wanted to take advantage of the fact that mesh nodes generally are higher power than your standard home node, in which case you would have better distance for your connections.

      Intel tested centrino tech in their labs to be useable to 91m, I know a tech who is currently setting up a mesh network with another companies mesh nodes that has gotten plus 300m [i]through 2 houses[/i].

      I don't expect Joe Sixpack to set up a mesh network (mesh would imply more than one node) because I wouldn't expect Joe sixpack to setup a neighborhood network, same difference.

      -T
      • On the other hand, part of the idea is that joe sixpack can go get something like this, plug it in, and be on the mesh. It will immediately give him wireless access to the network, and let him share connections with other people. For that to really work you should have multiple interfaces, but it can certainly be done with one, filtering packets by mac address and requiring a VPN connection for access to restricted networks/services.
  • You'd think slashdot ed's would have learned not to link to wikis from the last time.

    right now the contents of the FrontPage are:

    * FrontPage

    * RecentChanges
    * FindPage
    * HelpContents

    gnaa. www.gnaa.us
    • I just reverted it (as well as I could) but who knows how long it'll last before it's vandalized again. My guess is 30 seconds.

    • Re:Nice work Timmy. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      Just what I was going to post, myself.

      Never liked open Wikis for that reason... Would it be so difficult to have a Wiki that doesn't update the actual page until one or more reviewers has a chance to approve the change?

      I mean, come on now, a Wiki isn't a discussion forum, it wouldn't be terrible to have to wait even 24 hours before something updates...

      • Re:Nice work Timmy. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sploo22 ( 748838 ) <dwahler AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:16AM (#9558894)

        I mean, come on now, a Wiki isn't a discussion forum, it wouldn't be terrible to have to wait even 24 hours before something updates...

        Actually, yes, it can be. The whole point of a Wiki is flexibility. It can be used as a discussion board, chat room, encyclopedia, whatever. If you constantly have to have people approving everything, effective collaboration goes right out the window.

        What they should have done was temporarily lock down editing once the page was slashdotted, and unlocked it once the hits died down.

        • Re:Nice work Timmy. (Score:3, Informative)

          by evilviper ( 135110 )

          It can be used as a discussion board, chat room, encyclopedia, whatever.

          Perhaps, but those applications are mutually exclusive. So, if your goal isn't a chat-room (and most Wikis aren't), you want to slow down the revisions of the page. Waiting for someone to review your changes (not extensive review, just sanity checking) would do the job quite well.

          What they should have done was temporarily lock down editing once the page was slashdotted

          That might work if they had notice, but this is only one instan

        • Or better yet, N people (where N is proportional to how many ppl visit the page in a certain period of time) have to accept that the change is worthwhile before it becomes permanent. Those get shown the modifications in green and the removed text in red and get given a button to vote whether the mods were useful.

          Daniel

  • What is a MeshCube? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:49AM (#9558795)
    I mean, the little picture looks cool and all. That tiny box with two antennas sticking out of it. But what exactly is it? You can't really tell from the web page.

    Is it an access point? A router? A bridge? What? I'm sure if I spent more than 10 minutes digging through the page, I might find something, but I lost patience trying to figure it out.

    If they're going to sell these things, they might try a list of the features and maybe a general description of what it is. The article post had more information than the web page.

    • Re:What is a MeshCube? (Score:5, Informative)

      by popeydotcom ( 114724 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:52AM (#9558807) Homepage
      It's an access point that can be joined with other access points to form a "Mesh". So for example you can put a bunch of them in a town and share one or two internet connections to people who dont have such a connection. Also useful for networking over distances that one single AP wouldn't cover (by chaining them together through the airwaves).

      Jon Anderson pioneered this with his boxen, see http://www.locustworld.com/

    • Re:What is a MeshCube? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chep ( 25806 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:57AM (#9558825)
      It's an embedded Linux box with miniPCI ports, a processor and a distro on it. What you can do with a (slightly vintage) PC and a bunch of PCI WLAN cards, you can do with a Meshcube and a bunch of miniPCI WLAN cards, provided that you can shoe-horn your software into the provided 32-64MB of solid-state storage, or are content with an external USB-attached hard drive. I guess the correct answer then is "router", "AP" or "bridge" depending on what actual software you put on it.

      It seems to have much, much much more room than a WRT54G/GS, but it sure is quite pricier (the Linksys units are around EUR 90 and 110 incl. VAT respectively, though the GS is only now supposed to come out of pre-order).

      From the energy point of view, 4W for all they say the MeshCube does certainly looks very nice.
    • Is it an access point? A router? A bridge? What?

      My guess, if you've bothered to read the Wiki entry linked on the specs page, is that the answers are yes, yes, yes and yes, respectively. The mesh networking idea seems pretty interesting, worth a look-up.

      • Re:What is a MeshCube? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Pedrito ( 94783 )
        My guess, if you've bothered to read the Wiki entry linked on the specs page, is that the answers are yes, yes, yes and yes, respectively.

        Okay, first of all, why would the answers be yes, yes, yes, and yes, if "I've" read the wiki? Does my reading or not reading the Wiki change the answers?

        Yeah, I know that wasn't what you meant. I'm just being facetious. The fact is, I did go into the Wiki. And maybe I'm just particularly dim, or not a Wiki expert, but I couldn't find any information very quickly, so I

  • Nice product - terrible price... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shoeler ( 180797 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:50AM (#9558800)
    It makes Linksys' WRT54G look like an amazing bargain - especially because this runs a MIPS processor, has the same amount of RAM, and there's a (purportedly) bigger developer base for the WRT54G...

    And the Linksys can be had on ebay for $100.

  • Won't Mesh With Locustworld MeshAP (yet) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:56AM (#9558821) Homepage Journal
    According to Stephan Karlsson on the Locustworld mailing list, it appears to use MobileMesh (or OLSR) instead of AODV. This means it won't mesh with the Locustworld MeshAP [slashdot.org]. The open source nature means this can change rapidly since the Meshcube distribution is complete and includes a full(?) tool-chain.

    PS: The 199,90 price given is for a kit. Assembled it is 239,90.

  • Hardware Specs (Score:3, Informative)

    by sudohnim ( 248093 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:00AM (#9558837)
    * 400MHz MIPS processor AMD Au1500 aka Alchemy
    * 64 MB RAM
    * 32 MB Flash
    * 100Mbps Ethernet
    * Power Over Ethernet Standard IEEE 802.3af
    * USB host
    * USB device
    * up to 8 MiniPCI devices, the base unit comes with one dual adapter
    * WLAN cards with RP-SMA connectors
    * Small Size 7x5x7 cm
    * Low power consumption 4W
    * No moving parts
    * one (hidden) DebugConnector with serial port and EJTAG

  • http://www.soekris.com (Score:5, Interesting)

    by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:04AM (#9558852) Journal


    Before buying a meshcube you might want to take a look at http://www.soekris.com

    I have two pairs of the Net 4511 machines as wireless bridges and a spare that I use for play. I've made OpenBSD fit into 16 meg of flash using the OpenSoekris script. There is a Linux based appliance type OS from http://www.mikrotik.com that also runs on the platform and it does all sorts of Magic(tm).

    This is an interesting announcement but Soekris has the track record to judge by the amount of talk about them on the wireless ISP mailing lists.

    • Re:http://www.soekris.com (Score:4, Informative)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:18AM (#9558898) Journal
      Although I've been admiring Soekris boxes lately, I don't think they are a good fit for this... You can only plug in one Cardbus/PCMCIA card, and a MiniPCI device if you want, and that's $200... Meanwhile, the MeshCube says it has room for 8 MiniPCI cards...

      The Soekris boxes only have low-end processors, in the 233MHz range... A 400MHz MIPS processor should be faster (not sure of that), although x86 compatiblity is a good plus for Soekris.

      The MeshCube claims to have (slightly) lower power consumption than the Soekris as well.
      • I don't get it ... why would I want to plug in more than one MiniPCI AP card? To serve on different AP channels or something?
        • As the old saying goes... If you don't know, you don't need it.
        • Long range and short range, mostly, or two long range links and a local wireless network, if you put three interfaces into it. To my mind the ideal setup is to have three wireless, two remote and one local, and the ethernet. That way one system can handle all my wireless connections - one long-range link, one mesh, and one local, or two long-range links and one local. (I suspect I'm going to end up living in the boonies.)

          With sufficient configuration (has anyone come up with a service autoconfiguration to

          • (I suspect I'm going to end up living in the boonies.)

            hey, me too. stuff like this definitely makes it easier to wean yourself from civilization without having to go tooo far out of the way for advice. ;)

            all the benefits of civilization, none of the noise, right? ;)

            (has anyone come up with a service autoconfiguration tool for mesh networks?)

            oooh ... zeroconf and uucp, good freakin' idea! ;)
            • UUCP probably isn't the answer, but I've spent so much time with it on such an assortment of operating systems that the UUCP hammer makes everything look like the modem nail. I do however think that it would be neat to have some kind of system on cellphones that would act kind of like UUCP but instead of always sending to a smart host you would give a piece of the data to anyone passing by. You'd generate some parity restoration files and pass them out too, to increase the chance that you would get enough d


      • Eight miniPCI are going to be of little value. A device that small can have two radios in the same band, so long as they're not transmitting simultaneously. FYI Soekris offers a dual cardbus box with a miniPCI slot - enough room for 802.11b, 802.11a, and a PCS/cell data card.

        There is more to selecting a vendor than product specs. What is their track record? What if they go 'tits up' tomorrow? There are probably better designs than Soekris, but there are a lot of people using it which makes me think

        • Eight miniPCI are going to be of little value. A device that small can have two radios in the same band, so long as they're not transmitting simultaneously.

          I'm getting so very tired of all the /. ers always convinced they are right, and everyone else is wrong... Arggg...

          Sure, you couldn't POSSIBLY put in 4X 802.11g cards, each with large, roof-mounted directional antennas... Nooooo. That must be impossible to do, because you said so...

          There is more to selecting a vendor than product specs.

          There is m

    • Stay FAR FAR away from Miktrotik. I could sit here and tell you horror stories about it that I have first hand but here are the highlights:

      -Unpatched security holes known for YEARS. Run NMAP against a Mikrotik box and watch what happens (at least since the last time I used it).

      -Unwillingness to provide source code to GPLed packages included (again since the last time I used it).

      -Many failed upgrades rendering boxes usless despite following instructions to the letter.

      -Unwillingness to refund money when

      • I don't like the refusal to release modified GPL code but I was always under the impression the magic was in the GUI and command line and that underneath it all they didn't change applications.

        Upgrades are touchier than Cisco which is the product I measure performance against, but you just plain can't *get* Cisco boxes to do what people do with MikroTik

        Its a small company in Latvia. They've done amazing things with limited resources and I'm not surprised about the financial angle. They expect you to
        • Well, there are problems with that. The GUI isn't intuitive in my opinion and not all things available on the command line are implemented in the GUI. Statistical data is readily available and easily found in the GUI but not in the command line. Intricate settings are easy to find on the command line but not in the GUI.

          I guess what I am saying is that the GUI and the command line feel like there is no consistency between them.


          • And this is different from Cisco how? Sounds like MikroTik is on a very similar track and they may have just as much success in the long run.

            I haven't touched it since 2.7 but I'm going to build another one soon.

    • For the soekris box, also check out m0n0wall [m0n0.ch], which is a FreeBSD-based firewall (wired or wireless). The latest beta version supports traffic shaping, captive portal, VPNs, etc.. The mailing list is very active, too.

  • Original WIKI Entry (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) * on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:05AM (#9558857) Journal
    This is before the trolls got to it...

    MeshCube OpenSource Distribution

    This will become the main site for the MeshCube OpenSource distribution. (Until we have set up our webshop at http://www.meshcube.com, we also abuse the domain meshcube.org for hosting our order form.)

    The MeshCube is a new hardware platform dedicated to WirelessLAN mesh routing, developed by [http://www.4g-systems.biz 4G Systems, Hamburg]. With a 400MHz ["MIPS"] processor, 64MB RAM and 32MB flash, and up to 8 MiniPCI cards, it is powerful enough to provide excellent security and encryption, and flexible enough for custom applications and modifications. See http://meshcube.org/english/specs.html or HardwareSpecs for more details about the hardware.

    The MeshCubeDistribution is the Linux distribution running on the MeshCube. Its main features are MeshRouting, autoconfiguration of networking, an emphasis on security (IpSec, VPN), and a compact design (to fit on the 32MB flash). It is completely licensed under the GPL [gnu.org] and will be developed here in our CVS in true Open Source manner. We happily accept patches and additions, but please be patient -- it takes some time to evaluate patches and import sources into CVS.

    We have set up several mailing lists for communication related to the project. Please subscribe here [meshcube.org]. We've also set up a Bugzilla (bug tracking system) [meshcube.org]; please use it to report any bugs you may encounter.

    There is a feed of packages you can use to install new software on your cube and to update your installation. See HowTo/InstallPackages for instructions.

    This wiki is free to edit for anyone and currently divided into four sections: HowTo, MeshRouting, HardWare and SoftWare.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    CVS [meshcube.org]

    Mailinglists [meshcube.org]

    Bugzilla [meshcube.org]

    DownLoad

    I have not found any hint on this wiki to an IRC-Channel for people which uses the meshcube, so i opend one. madd.

    * Server:......irc.freenode.net

    * Channel:...#meshcube

  • Let me see...

    EUR199.90 for a kit that can "easily be assembled", and EUR239.90 for something that is "readily assembled".

    What if I want one pre-built... ;-)

  • The meshCube is excellent for mesh netwroking using MANET routing protocols. It has sucessfully ran the optimized linkState routing protocol from http://www.olsr.org for self configuring multi hop operation.

  • How does this compare with Nokia mesh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rick.C ( 626083 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:43AM (#9559001)
    IIRC, the Nokia mesh network announced several years ago had enough range (at least several hundred meters) that even a few nodes sprinkled around a neighborhood could form an effective network. And they had an AP with a 10 Km range to get to the first node. Is the meshcube for neighborhoods or just for apartment buildings?

    At 100Mbps, the meshcube is faster than the older Nokia, but if the range is no better than a Linksys wireless router, I'm not sure what their market would be.

    • When the Nokia mesh starter kit first hit the market in 2001, it ran about US$8000 for three mesh nodes, base station, and control software. Additional nodes ran about US$600 each. In 2003, the kit dropped to about $5600. Even at that price, recouping the initial investment would have taken a while if one tried to stay competitive with dsl/cable. This [queenanne.net] provider charges about US$150/month, which will pay the bills, but I can't imagine how these people stay in business.

      My take on Rooftop vs. DIY 802.11b meshes

      • The Meshcube seems much more reasonable, if it's got the range to pull together a loose mesh.
        What about the Pringle-can antenna? It wouldn't be good for the local network, but it would be good to connect nodes.
        • Granted, there are a lot of DIY antennas that do wonders adding gain to 802.11 signals. I don't think the can will do it for a mesh, though. If I preach to the converted, my pardons: the benefits of a wireless mesh come from each node being able to tie in to one or more adjacent mesh nodes in any direction. This usually assumes an omni antenna. A couple of Pringle's cans would be used as high gain, very directional antennas to connect a distant network base station (wired to DSL, T-1, OC-48, or whatever) to
          • Ah, I see.

            I figured what this would be useful for is using one of the antennas on the meshcube for an omnidirectional 802.11g link for individual users, and a the other attached to a directional antenna with 802.11a to connect to other meshcubes, as a backbone.
  • As someone who wants to link neighbors in a dense Florida forest I'd appreciate any suggestions as to how to set up a mesh operating at 900MHZ (which gets through the leaves where 2.4GHZ does not. I'm not saying this just from theory - only cell phones using TDMA's lower frequencies get a signal and only 900 MHz portable phones work at a distance from the house).

  • meshcubes (Score:4, Informative)

    by throwaway18 ( 521472 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @09:13AM (#9559167) Journal
    I saw one of these last November at an event in London attended by a lot of the consume.net people. The photo does not do justice to how small it is, about 3" by 3" by 1". It can be powered up the cat 5 so it would be relativly easy to mount one on a roof.

    The software is based on debian. Christian Car told me that "egiht hops and there is no bandwidth left" which means my dreams of city wide mesh networks are going to need somthing resembling network planning. The biggest obstacle I can see at the moment is that there are literally tens of thousands of access points in London. Access points transmit several bursts a second even when they are not transfering any data. It is possible to do five mile links between convinient points but even with high gain antennas the peers will still hear lots of access points announcing away plus all the other stuff in the 2.4GHz band.

    The company is half a dozen geeks. They have great technology but don't seem to grasp the importance of documenting it and having a good website with lots of info on what it does and how to use it. I mailed them eight months ago say "everyone thought it looked really cool in the transparent case, at least put a picture on your website!". The biggest barrier to mesh network seems to be a people problem rarther than a technologial one. Getting a mesh net running requires alpha geek level network and computer knowledge. We have enough alpha geeks. We need more people who can recruit people and get access to sites for nodes and organise the geeks.
    • Living close to Hamburg, I am considering driving there and buying such a thing.

      But I think the *really* big obstacle in adoption are people with these problems:

      - Why do we need it, we have already DSL/analog modem/ISDN?
      - But if the network doesn't work, which number should I dial?
      - Isn't RF dangerous?
      - Where are the hidden costs? It must cost something!
      - My provider gives 'my internet with many colors and sound and multimedia'. I doubt you bunch of geeks can provide such a thing!

      And so forth. *SIGH*

      Oh
      • You know, there's nothing wrong with being able to find out who's been comitting crimes while using an internet connection. Its not a hit against civil liberties.
        • "there's nothing wrong with being able to find out who's been comitting crimes while using an internet connection"

          1. But there's a lot wrong with forcing *me* to be deputized to do so. It's just like forcing a publisher to disclose a list of customers, or like blaming the bus driver for unwittingly transporting the bomber to the airport.

          2. The issue of whether or not there's anything wrong with "being able to find out who's committing crimes" on the net, depends a LOT on which behaviors are currently d
    • Or more specifically, how far is eight hops?

      If we're talking 5 miles/hop then presumably that gives a maximum radius of 40 miles? The radius of the M25 is very roughly 25 miles.

      Looking at the Consume node database, it looks like coverage is hugely less than 5 miles from each node. Probably more like a couple of hundred meters. I had always assumed that Consume nodes would just pass data along as many times as necessary to get it to its destination. Is there a maximum number of passes then? If so, the
      • Looking at the Consume node database, it looks like coverage is hugely less than 5 miles from each node.
        Most of the nodes in the consume database are not linked to each other. There are only a handfull of mesh network in operation.
        The consume net people have started using a VPN over the internet to link nodes which of course is somewhat limited in bandwidth.

        Or more specifically, how far is eight hops?

        That up to whoever builds the network. It depends if you want blanket coverage or not. Mesh networking
  • If so, I'll get a bulk order together to save on international shipping etc etc. Drop me a line at richardagreen@gmail.com (yay I get to test the spam filter as well) and put something like "Yes - definitely", "Maybe - depending on the price you get", or "probably not, but keep me posted" in the subject line and I'll add up the number of interested parties after 48 hours and see if it's worth buying in bulk.

  • I am not sure I understand what this would be used for, compared to the other wireless routers out there. Is it for setting up an alternate peer to peer internet or what? Or is it just for building a normal local LAN that is easier to administer and easier to setup and has some more than normal security features? Or all of the above?

    ?

    • Re:what is this used for exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by j1m+5n0w ( 749199 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @01:16PM (#9561848) Homepage Journal

      Typical consumer-grade access points allow you to set up networks that involve a single wireless hop (from the client to the AP). Most APs don't know how to talk to each other wirelessly - if you want a bigger network than a single AP can cover, you have to string ethernet cable between the access points. This is frequently inconvenient, especially when the network spans a large area [mit.edu].

      Mesh networks use one of the many ad-hoc routing protocols (such as AODV, DSR, TORA, or DSDV) to decide the optimal path for each packet to travel (where optimal might mean shortest path, most reliable path, fewest number of expected transmissions, etc).

      In theory, they are also easier to set up.

      Also, having a "hackable" AP has benefits of its own - you can set up a captive portal, or a web server, or a web proxy, or a print server, or a file server, or anything else that might not come standard on a commodity access point.

      -jim

      • that explains it thoroughly. Now I see why they are more expensive. They look like a fair price now for what they can do.

  • Mesh routing on 4Watts??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dbateman ( 150302 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @10:09AM (#9559675)

    The reason to use mesh routing is to extend the range of a transmission by hopping between devices. To make such a strategy make sense the mesh nodes should either be battery powered, so they can be used in an area where you can't get power or be for use in a rapidly deployable network, where it doesn't make sense to set up additional infrastructure

    But 4W of power makes in a bit power hungry for set and forget type of installation. The addition of power-over-ethernet make it even more of a joke. Why extend the range of one AP effectively doubling the traffic over the air, if the mesh point is already plugged into the ethernet to get its power? You're better off with two seperate APs in that case, and use the ethernet infrastructure for routing between the APs.

    So although this is a nice device, the I don't see much use for it.

    D.

    • Network connectivity is not as ubiquitous as electrical power. There are many places where a power outlet is available but an ethernet jack is not. Besides, you can generate your own power if you have to.

      If you're having trouble imagining the uses for a mesh network, take a look at this [mit.edu].

      -jim

      • But, if you have electrical power, then why not use this [homepna.org] to also get the network connectivity. Its just a question of if the time expended to setup the additional infrastructure is justified.

        I'll add another point, if the other nodes in the mesh offer a capability you can't get through the fixed infrastructure. Interesting network you show. I presume it is 802.11b with directive antennas to get the range you are showing (maybe 802.11g or 11a though). So I presume the aim is at least 11Mbps. What are the lo

        • The HomePNA product you cite has a range of 1000 feet. It wasn't obvious what the throughput is. It also wasn't clear if it is capable of linking multiple houses, which might go through a transformer.

          I've personally tested a five mile 802.11 link. It wasn't terribly fast, but it worked. And I didn't need five miles of wire.

          The project I linked to is a research project at MIT. Last I checked, they were using 802.11b with 8db omnidirectional antennas attached to 200mw wireless cards. Throughput depe

          • Jim,

            I have no doubts that in certain places mesh network is the way to go. Anything with rapid deployment for example (military, emergency services). However, mesh networks can't compete against a combination of fixed acess points and existing infrastructure. The performance is worse, and always will be, since the limiting factor is the retransmission occupy channel capacity, thus resulting in an overall reduction in the total system capacity.

            In a scenario of fixed APs and infrastructure, mesh routing wil

  • also look at (Score:4, Informative)

    by mo ( 2873 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @12:31PM (#9561270)
    For an alternative, check out the linksys wrt54g [linksys.com] and the wrt54gs [linksys.com].
    Linksys has released the full source code [linksys.com] and build environment to these routers enabling you to extend the linux install that these are based on.

    These devices are not as powerful as the meshbox, but they are much cheaper. They also have more ethernet ports to add a switch/dmz/whatever, although there's only a single wireless device.

    Multiple [ksilebo.net] projects [slashdot.org] have sprung up to extend the functionality of these routers, along with a bunch of informational [seattlewireless.net] sites about other hacking projects [rwhitby.net]
  • ..a herbal plant's name. Clearly, from the first look i was thinking it was some biological article. "Meschube", what a small, funny name

  • Sveasoft firmware for WRT54G(S) may have mesh soon (Score:3, Informative)

    by crush ( 19364 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @04:46PM (#9564385)

    Sveasoft continues to push ahead with adding features and have discussed adding mesh functionality as long ago as January of 2004. If they could do this then it would extend the market for the Linksys WRT54G(S). This is all another example of how the GPL can benefit everyone: consumers get cheaper, fully-featured wireless routers, Linksys/Cisco get a larger market. Good thing that Rob Flickenger forced Linksys to live up to the GPL.

    Sveasoft mesh discussion [sveasoft.com]

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