[wsfii-discuss] fon/meraki/community meshes differentiated .. (was: Re: Fwd: wireless connectivity.. Is802.11n the end of ethernet?)

Wed Oct 3 11:37:11 UTC 2007

On Tue, 2007-10-02 at 09:57 +0100, Vickram Crishna wrote:
> The real point is, are any commercial manufacturers making flashable
> routers/APs that are suitable for meshes, at price points where the
> FONs and Merakis of the world have a run for their money?

if you can scale yes. (as said on this list) the atheros board as "just"
a pcb. 

> 
> If not, then the problem is how to create a 'business model' for
> community mesh that justifies 'subsidising' the real world cost of
> hardware/TCO to the end-consumer. For obvious philosophical reasons
> neither of these models is really the bee's knees, but what alternate
> models exist whereby poor (3rd World, specifically) communities can
> hope to leverage themselves (without bankrupting themselves to get
> there)? Let's be clear, straightforward charity doesn't cut it. Does
> anyone know a model for altruistic venture capital? (We already have
> altruistic tech assistance, our listmembers and WSFII itself have
> richly proven it).
> 

The question would be, how do you want to pay:
- money
- information (Fon, Google)

Saving money versus time:
- local maded
	- casings 
	- antenna's (not for long links)
- training

Finding a model that get money/time from local gain (the reason why the
wifi net should be there anyway)

Having knowledge / tool / checklist how to make investigate if and how a
project will work or not a more important can the technics.

> Someone mentioned acquiring Meraki hardware on eBay or somewhere and
> flashing new firmware, this also sounds very close to piracy, rather
> than a clean honest approach. 
(just 2ct)
Since Fon+ is coming out, maybe there are lots of Fon's avaible for
dumpprices.
However I would prefer "hardware stability" in the marked (egg Soekris /
Wrap) than the need to support all types of linksys/smc/fon/merakis etc
etc depending on what the manifactors prescribes us.
(/just 2ct)

> If Meraki stuff is priced low, it is because the company expects to
> recover its money from the inbuilt functioning of a Meraki mesh, not a
> clean Open mesh. Scamming them, taking advantage of their chosen
> architecture, does not ring right, and in fact if done on a large
> scale will only lead to closure for Meraki. 

IMHO is the term mesh is not needed here, I would prefer to refer to
cheap hardware. Man can easily build a open wifi network without using
any mesh technology. 
Mesh it self is dont has to be open....

> I think this is very important to understand, and for WSFII to evolve,

aye,

Marten