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Introducing 802.11s - Wireless Mesh Networking
ikewillis writes "Intel has introduced a new wireless networking standard called 802.11s. This standard utilizes a mesh topology, allowing for fully self-configuring networks where each node can relay messages on behalf of others, thus increasing the range and available bandwidth with the number of nodes active within the system, versus the point-to-point structure of existing WiFi networks. This will radically transform WiFi hotspots, allowing the geographical area and available bandwidth on the network to scale with the number of participants."
WiMax and other technologies like it will still be much more important because, do we really want a grid of short range networks that will ultimately cause divisions between different parts of the networks if one node goes down or would we prefer enourmously large networks that overlap each other (the different nodes) once or twice or thrice?
./revolution
where do they get all these letters from? There seems to be 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g and now 802.11s, and I have no idea why the letters are what they are. Anyone care to explain?
Well, mesh networking does not necessarily need a new 802.11x spec. This article on Tom Bridges blog is republished from the first issue of Make outlines how to create mesh networks using an Airport Express.
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The way things are going, cities won't be able to provide this for their citizens. No one needs a network this big for personal usage; if municipal wi-fi is banned, it will be for naught.
I think it sure would be nifty to see this type of AP installed in cars and have uplink points along major highways . . . It'd be a fluid network that would improve with traffic . . . Then again, maybe encouraging heavier traffic is a bad thing . . . it'd still be cool.
Intel has not introduced the 802.11s standard; Intel has made a proposal to the IEEE, which they will take into consideration while designing the 802.11s standard.
The article makes 802.11s sound like a general mesh standard, which would be really nice. However, what I read on the IEEE Web site recently made it sound like merely a self-configuring version of WDS (so that only access points participate in the mesh). Can anyone provide details on the features of Intel's proposal?
once you get licenses in the picture, you disempower the smaller entities and empower the larger entities. And I think that most Americans are starting to see that whenever larger entities gain power over small entities and citizens, then things start to go sour...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
IIRC, the Nintendo DS acts as a router/node to other DS consoles - okay speed may be different but topology is pretty much the same surely?
Set up enough of these, and you could do your own neighborhood network...
Could this jump-start the "freeweb" movement, particularly since the telcos are lobbying and pushing to kill the muni wireless attempts?
Let's get the entrepreneurs and the networking hippies on the same "frequency."
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
What happens when a node goes down between several other nodes and the other nodes are now out of range of each other? The network will split and the result will be two seperate networks that are unable to reach each other until the connecting node is up again. Will users be constantly facing problems similar to IRC netsplits? Not to mention that all equipment would need to be replaced to take advantage of this new standard. I'd be more interested in longer range, or more robust signals that can penetrate more obstacles.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wireless-network 2.htm
Check out the whole article to find out more about the various 802.11x standards (excluding the new 's' one).
...right....so more people in one area all on the same frequency so they can mesh. So how exactly is the speed going to be anything reasonable or reliable if you're increasing the spectrum noise?
I recall the Wifi band is somewhere around 2.4GHz, which also happens to be the band absorbed by water. You know... like in your microwave oven... wave absorption heats the water, hence the "cooking".
Is anyone else even the slightest bit concerned about all the background radiation these technologies create. We have wireless in our homes, FM/AM radio broadcasts floating around, bluetooth devices, WAP's in restaurants, coffee houses, my car dealership, etc. etc. etc. Does anyone have any links to research showing that all of this "noise" is safe to our fragile human bodies? Or is the ability to download porn anywhere, anytime more important to everyone?
There are already many research projects ongoing which try to find good routing algorithms and network topologies for IP based mesh networks.
:) and ethernet network. You'd need upgrades for a new routing algorithm and progress in this area will be much slower.
Most of these projects try to build their mesh networks on the IP level, i.e. hardware and, IMHO even more important, medium independent.
This standard seems to work below the IP level, i.e. invisible for normal routing hardware and only usable with those "s" devices.
I wonder if this is really a good idea. Making such a standard prevents altering and improving the routing algorithms (because in the best case, they reside on some FPGA) or using mesh network topologies with, lets say, a mixed WiFi, free space optical (think house to house laser pointers
OTOH, maybe the network will be more stable, but one has to prove that.
Just an FYI, WiMAX runs across both licensed and unlicensed bands.
Because, as we all know, P2P networks are EVIL.
Signed,
The MPAA/RIAA.
Couldn't this theoretically replace the internet altogether? Once the densities of these "s" hotspots is high enough, wouldn't it be theoretically possible to retrieve a page, send an email, etc. without ever having to transmit the message over the internet "proper"?
The whole idea behind a mesh network is there is no single point of failure.
That does mean you have to design things so there isn't a single point of failure...unless you want a single point of failure, of course.
The spec just addresses the nuts and bolts of devices talking to each other. It doesn't take the place of an intelligent designer.
I suspect not, with thousands of participants, routing may become unmanagable. Also, in the best case bandwidth is only going to increase by the number of distinct paths between endpoints (a chain is only as strong as its weakest link). But, I suspect once an optimum path is chosen, all traffic will follow that path, and adding more nodes won't improve your bandwidth at all! Unless you seriously beleive this protocol is going to do load balancing over every possible path between the two endpoints, in which case I would suggest you don't have any background in Computer Science.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
As I said in some previous post...
My preeciousss.
I've read the scenarios for the wireless kind of "mesh" which assume that "all devices are created equal", regardless of if they are routers connected to the wall outlet or a (potentially on its last drops of juice) cellphones/PDAs. If such a thing really takes off you will NEVER get "stand-by" power consumption and battery life from your (constantly transmitting other people's data) cellphone.
Paul B.
"Wireless XML mesh adaptive grid networking high speed premium edition XP ultra pro elite extreme" standard.
Just think about the synergies and win-win go to market opportunities that can be obtained by utilizing it.
This is a good question and, last I checked, an open research topic. One workaround is to only accept route advertisements from a trusted set of routers.
The performance will always be less than an "every AP has its own landline" topology, but networks will be much easier to build (and perhaps simpler to maintain).
This is the end of the telco. A self-organizing internet of WiFi, once adopted on a massive scale, will obviate the need for the last mile provider. In all the states without protective legislation, municipalities will have one or two huge pipes for the wider municipal network to plug into, say at the Library and Town Hall, and let everyone's 802.11s hardware negotiate with each other the best path to it.
The places that do have protective legislation will find themselves repealing it in the face of enormous public pressure.
The only purpose of the telco will be to provide fiber for institutional and corporate clients concerned with security and guaranteed bandwidth.
Good riddance.
SoupIsGood Food
Capsule summary--the privately-owned WLAN infrastructure should bypass and where possible replace the wired corporate-owned network infrastructure. There are three main facilitating aspects:
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Will my 802.11s router run at 5mbps in a busy apartment, lending the remaining bandwidth to forwarding other packets?
Will a wardriver in the parking lot be able to DDoS the mesh?
Will I have to disable mesh and disallow all outside traffic the first time I install the router, if I just want to use the router myself? Will I be able to do that?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
But if you've ever had a roommate who runs p2p apps with uncapped upload bandwidth, you'd know why sharing a 'net connection sucks. It only takes a single computer on a cable modem based lan to make the connection unusable for everyone else.
Apps like edonkey/emule and limewire will gladly use every bit of upstream bandwidth you have, bringing pings to sites like google and yahoo up to 1000+ ms for the rest of the lan. And of course, the majority of people are do not know that they should limit their apps' network usage, much less how to do so.
I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in sharing my internet connection with people who aren't computer literate enough to be 'good neigbors'.
For example, no one has given a MAC protocol that solves the hidden/exposed sender/receiver problems simultaneously. Without such a MAC protocol, it is impossible to resolve the contention fairly. 802.11 DCF solves hidden and exposed sender, but not receiver.
Also, Gupta and Kumar showed that the per-node bandwidth in a wireless mesh with random node placement is O(1/sqrt(n)). This is especially bad news for the sort of nationwide wireless meshes people have been talking about here.
Finally, TCP is especially problematic over multiple wireless hops. It causes self-interference which creates massive packet loss due to contention. TCP is built on the assumption that all packet loss is from congestion, but this assumption is not met by wireless contention losses.
In my own simulations, TCP's overaggression causes routing packet losses, creating spurious route breakage and even more TCP timeouts.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.