[TriLUG] OT: solar wireless mesh router

[Magnus]

OlsonE at aosa.army.mil wrote:
> However, there ARE green boxes on every block, and fiber runs to
> those (I've seen it exposed a few times and had to call it in). That
> would make it much easier to run fiber from the DSLAM (if that's what it
> is) right to your doorstep.

If those are the green boxes owned by the cable company, there is no
relationship between it and the DSLAM.

That brings up another interesting point.  Our utility poles (in areas
that have them) are cluttered with wires for cable TV, telephone,
sometimes separate lines for internet.  The cable companies have been
making a go of offering the "triple play" but really all of them, even
the phone companies, should have their hands out of the last mile
network.  That should be maintained as a municipal service (with
maintenance likely outsourced), and then any other service can piggyback
off of it.

> I've been thinking ....about things along this line. Even something if
> everyone combined their wifi router, and made a cluster so to speak...
> would be mind boggling. Something along the lines of what the FatPipe
> systems do.

Except with all of that RF chattering away with very limited spectrum to
share, it's all going to go downhill fast.

Additionally, you're going to have incredible latency to get from one
end of the network to the other (likely exceeding maximum hop counts)
and actually a very small amount of bandwidth shared between many
people.  54Mbps sounds like a lot until you consider 1000 people sharing it.

You're either going to need a very scalable hub & spoke topology
(WiMax?) or a proven ring topology (FDDI? SONET?)  I'm inclined to
suggest the latter would be more appropriate inside of city limits, with
the former preferred for rural users.