Wireless Mesh Networks
Oct. 23, 2004
With my new advisor, I've been working on some problems related to wireless meshes. These are computer networks made up entirely of wireless connections between them. There are many problems which, while solved on the wired network, are still open in wireless networks. A wireless "mesh" is a wireless network designed to give residential coverage. Each home puts an antenna on their roof and transmits their Internet traffic by broadcast, rather than over their cable or DSL line. Due to the economics of lying new cable to everyone's door, it is possible to get much higher traffic rates for a much lower cost over a wireless mesh than using today's Internet technologies. In addition, I believe a wireless mesh might also have some social benefits.
For example, these types of networks have a strong community-led aspect to them. Each homeowner simply purchases his or her own equipment and mounts it to the roof. There is no ongoing cost, aside from maintenance or upgrades. You depend directly on your neighbors to carry your traffic to the Internet. Thus, the more neighbors you have with the technology, the more useful it is for you. Wireless meshes allow for much more competition in Internet services. Any company that can provide a wired Internet connection within broadcast range of your community network can agree to carry your traffic on the wider Internet. There is a much lower startup cost to this sort of operation than on starting your own ISP today. Finally, it promotes a stronger interest in community ownership of the airwaves, since individuals are now both broadcasters and consumers.
So, why don't we have these networks today? There are still a lot of technical issues to be addressed, but some communities are starting to build them, if only for experimental purposes. MIT has a "rooftop" network entirely composed of wireless nodes. Urbana has a small wireless network downtown which is sponsored by indymedia. One large hurdle to a vast deployment of this technology is the requirement that the network only operate on the unlicensed communications band. If there were a specific channel dedicated by the FCC for wireless community networking, we could get larger broadcast ranges and less interference.