NEWS: What a tangled mesh we weave

<http://www.theregister.com/2007/01/31/wireless_mesh_packethop/>

But does it fit the bill for muni Wi-Fi?

While the promise of free-for-all municipal Wi-Fi networks remains on
the horizon for most -- and a Googly mess
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/23/sf_muni_wifi/) for others --
mesh wireless, the technology that utopians fancy will float us away
on a cloud of education, is making practical progress.

Ironically, the technology came out of a 1980s DARPA research project
at SRI International, which separated from Stanford University in the
1970s amidst administrative concerns that the university was becoming
an organ of the decidely anti-utopian Department of Defense.

Unlike the standard Wi-Fi model, where each device on the network
communicates via the central hub, mesh network devices communicate
through other devices, whether they are active participants in the
communication or not. This means that data packets can hop long
distances from device to device in parallel fashion, forging
redundancy and stability by default. All this with no more security
vulnerability than vanilla Wi-Fi, says leading mesh networking brain
Dr Ambatipudi Sastry.

This makes it ideal for ad hoc networking - in natural disaster
areas, for example. A better prepared Hurricane Katrina rescue-effort
could have cobbled together a stable, high bandwidth mesh network
double quick; it's easy then to imagine a spotter helicopter relaying
the locations of survivors to rescue boats over video with GPS data.

Bay Area spin-out Packethop is working exactly that type of pitch for
mesh wireless. Since emerging from SRI in 2003
(http://www.sri.com/news/releases/11-10-03.html) in the hands of
Sastry and CEO Michael Howse, the firm has concentrated on developing
saleable applications for mesh networking, and has bagged contracts
with several US cities. Also the company has performed a valuable
public service of taking dozens of out-of-work actors off LA's
streets - a recent counter-terrorism training exercise by 28 agencies
in Long Beach demonstrated fast deployment of a mesh, and use of
Packethop's GPS, whiteboarding and multiple video channel
applications.

The mesh wireless play is made somewhat easier Stateside by the
4.9GHz spectrum band, which is reserved for public safety
applications. In Europe the spectrum carve-up makes it a tougher
sell, although Packethop's top marketeer Kevin Payne reckons there
could be a chance for its product in the UK, and he was over here
recently to scout for partners.

Those monsters of tech Intel, Motorola, Cisco and IBM have their own
mesh wireless efforts underway. (You can get a flavour of Big Blue's
thinking on mesh from this

(http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/i...cntxt=a1000450)
executive tech report.) But the issue of available bandwidth has been
a sticking point for the business case for such large firms; the
market Packethop is currently playing to measures in millions of
dollars, only.

Indeed, the consumer section
(http://www.packethop.com/markets/consumer.php) of Packethop's
website is noticeably thin, steering clear of making an actual pitch
for wireless mesh in homes in favour of quasi-philosophical musings
on the human compulsion to communicate. Which, to be fair, we can't
blame them for.

Sastry is upbeat about the mesh-for-all possibilities down the line,
but he reckons the biggest problem with rolling out a city-wide
genuine mesh network are social, not technical. "You would have
problems of people not wanting to share their internet access point.
It's a way off," he said.

--
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