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Meshcube: A New Mesh-Routing Wireless Device
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."
"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.
Hmmm.
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)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
right now the contents of the FrontPage are:
eden.h4xx.com - whacky free for all image board
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.
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.
... there are a bunch of pricewatch entries for the WRT54G at under $70.
PS: The 199,90 price given is for a kit. Assembled it is 239,90.
Seastead this.
* 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
Its pretty sad when a commercial OS ships a debugger with their system but no compiler.
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.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
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 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. We've also set up a Bugzilla (bug tracking system); 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
Mailinglists
Bugzilla
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
Hmmm.
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.
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.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
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.
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.
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 could be used to cover a group of nearby building where it is hard to get cables between the buildings.
You need the antennas high above obstructions to do long distance links due to the fresnel effect. A five mile link needs antennas 40 feet above the rooftops of the buildings in the way. You might be able to make a 40 mile long chain of mesh routers but you don't get five mile radius coverage arond each router. Another radio with an omnidirectional antenna will provide coverage for peers within a couple of hundred meters of the router. A node in the link path four miles from each router needs a high gain antenna on a rooftop.
For an alternative, check out the linksys wrt54g and the wrt54gs.
Linksys has released the full source code 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 projects have sprung up to extend the functionality of these routers, along with a bunch of informational sites about other hacking projects
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.
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
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