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Cisco To Unveil Wireless Mesh Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "CRN is reporting that Cisco will enter the wireless mesh networking fray next week. Since aquiring Airespace Cisco has been working hard to bring their own mesh technology to fruition. The new solution will target businesses who wish to move the traditional Wi-Fi network outside and possibly cover large regions."
I find this announcement from Cisco quite puzzelling. It's not really a mesh - more of a star. A true mesh means that each node can talk to many other nodes. In Cisco's proposed solution they have a central node attaching (via 802.11a) to remote nodes in what seems like a star configuration.
In a true mesh topology only one node requires a wired connection, and the traffic can be routed through nodes which attach to this node to nodes further away. If I understand Cisco's idea of a "mesh" the end nodes (the ones in the street lights) etc cannot route anything to any other nodes.
Now the interesting thing is that people have been building mesh networks for a few years now. They take the very inexpensive WRTG54G, and put a linux image on it. From that point on it's a matter of using open source software (available in various shapes and forms) to make this very inexpensive box into a true mesh node.
I think another point which is being lost here is that people (including municipalities) want to roll these things out at low cost. Because nobody wants to pay huge money to access them, and the coverage of an individual node is so small, the cost per access point must be low, and I mean REALLY low (like under $100). Cisco will never provide a solution for these costs - that's just not how they work.
So in the Cisco solution we have to also have a tower, so we can blast out 802.11a signal to all the nodes - also not very desirable. What if we want to cover a few streets and don't have proper line of sight? Suddenly it means multiple towers and escalating costs. A true mesh network hands the signal between adjacent nodes so line of sight isn't always needed to cover an area.
There are people out there rolling out working mesh networks right now, yet we are reading how there is big demand for this "new" technology. Please... Or am I missing something here?
The only problem I see with the existing solutions based on the WRTG54G is that it isn't an outdoor device. What we need is for someone to design a little box with very lower power consumption that can handle outdoor environments, and still keep it as low cost...
Just my two cents' worth.