Chris Car

Today I am doing a presentation at the monthly meeting of the Ile Sans Fil project in Montréal.

Ile Sans Fil is a non-profit community group devoted to providing free public wireless internet access to mobile users in public spaces throughout Montréal, Canada.

I am talking about the Meshcube and about my experience with WLAN meshed networks in general.

The address:

Restaurant Modigliani
1251 rue Gilford
Metro Laurier + autobus 27 saint-joseph, arrêt De Laroche + marche
vers le sud, tourner à droite à guilford jusqu’au 1251.

Vision of the Meshcube in 2002

• A Cube for everyone
• Cubes form a wireless meshed network automatically
• Good-looking and “stylish” device
• Free internet access for everyone
• Cube offers access to exclusive information and services
• Simple to use
• “Internet essential tools” / “Internet survival kit”

Meshcube Details

Hardware

• 400 MHz MIPS CPU
• 64 MB RAM
• 32 MB Flash Memory / ~ 15MB free memory
• 2x IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless interface
• 2x RP-SMA antenna connector
• 1x Ethernet
• 1x USB 1.1
• low energy consumption ~ 4 W
• small and light

More information at Meshcube.org

Software

• Based on Debian Linux
• Web-configuration interface
• Command line access
• DHCP service
• Web-server, PPPd, Firewall, etc.

Mesh routing protocols

• AODV: reactive protocol: route is discovered when needed; good for mobility (More info)
• Mobile Mesh: proactive protocol: “flooding” of routing information (More info)
• OLSR: proactive protocol: optimized “flooding” of routing information; link quality metric is used (More info)

Projects / experiments

• City of Hamburg: ~ 40 Meshcubes
• Wizard of Os conference in Berlin: ~ 20 Meshcubes (Topology visualization)
• Denmark / Djursland: ~ 15 Meshcubes (More info)
• Frankfurt exhibition area: ~ 300 Meshcubes

Conclusion

• It was fun, met a lot of interesting people
• Debugging Hardware is expensive
• Antennas are important
• size of the device did not play a role in projects
• Routing protocols were not efficient enough for requirements
• Linksys router with modified firmware are much cheaper
• IEEE 802.11s is a solution?
• Don’t focus so much on technology

Any questions?