Central Iowa Linux User's Group

Mesh Networking

Dave Weis gave a presentation on mesh networking. The concept is to put lots of cheap, small repeaters in neighborhoods or office complexes. This can be done to allow a neighborhood to get on the internet, or it could be used by a company that is in multiple office buildings. Instead of expensive solutions, they could use MeshNet.

Dave was using units from Meraki. Meraki allows you to see where the units are. The data can be retrieved in XML format, and is even geocoded.

Meraki offers cheap units, $50 per unit. Other company's units are $4000, but are much more resistant to weather (and bullets).

http://www.netequality.org has a wall-plug unit available. It looks like an A/C to D/C “wall wart” transformer.

Mesh networking started at MIT as roofnet. In Dave's demo, he had one unit hooked up wired to a DSL modem, and another one communicating wirelessly to the first unit. And another unit will communicate to the second unit, and so on, and so on. When you are in range of whichever unit, you will associate with that unit.

The Meraki units can also have Linux installed on them. For more information go to http://www.meraki.net/linux or http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Meraki/Mini

Dave ssh'ed into one of the devices and was able to view logs, config files, etc.

Through http://www.netequality.net, you can see which units are communicating with each other, and the path of your data.

For example, http://www.netequality.net/map.php?id=mariposa

WDS is similar to MeshNet, except WDS has one egress, with wireless hops, where MeshNet+ has multiple egresses, with wireless hops.