Being more specific on my question... [LWN.net]

Being more specific on my question...

Posted Feb 11, 2011 3:59 UTC (Fri) by ejr (subscriber, #51652)
Parent article: Moglen on Freedom Box and making a free net

Let's say on my small property I set up a mesh wireless network of three nodes. It's just a tiny bit bigger than two-node WDS.

Now let's say two neighbors set up one wireless node each, and another neighbor sets up two nodes.

How do I best combine these networks? None of the mesh protocols I've seen (BATMAN, 802.11whatever) handle peering multiple mesh networks. Each will want to prioritize its own traffic to its own egress point (or at least I would for mine).

If one of our egress points goes down, are there any current routing systems for sending packets out through other neighboring mesh networks?

I see this as critical. My example is trivially small. A "mesh" of tiny neighbors can cheat. A 200MHz ARM CPU with 128MiB can handle at most 100 nodes nearly with brute force. But now consider a mesh of these meshes. A neighborhood group can set up one mesh, and a neighboring group can set up another. Each has hundreds of nodes and tens of egress routes at a minimum. I haven't seen any widely supported protocols for this situation, and this is the one I think could help.

I would LOVE to be wrong.

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Being more specific on my question...

Posted Feb 13, 2011 21:18 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't have a technical solution to your question.

I would however point out a social solution to a similar problem:

the bittorrent protocol depends on people participating. Software was developed a few years ago (2008?) which would allow users to download without participating/contributing in any way. The developer of that program predicted the end of bittorrent within six months.

So there's hope. Not every abusable resource gets ruined.

Another example: people with open wifi routers would quickly put passwords on them if neighbours were really abusing them. The technology to really abuse an open router exists, but the problem hasn't exploded. Maybe meshes would also work despite the possibility for abuse.

Being more specific on my question...

Posted Feb 13, 2011 22:00 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

a lot of this depends on the purpose of the mesh network.

if you are trying to maintain a mesh network to prevent the government from shutting down the Internet (i.e. the Egypt scenario) then vulnerabilities that could let someone corrupt the network are very significant.

if you are trying to maintain a mesh network to extent the network to a wider area for your (and your neighbors) benefit, then vulnerabilities like this probably don't matter