8. Mesh Networking & Other cool stuff

Mesh networking has recently been garnering a lot of interest, particularly from community wireless groups and small-scale WISPs, but NETGEAR's co-marketing agreement with Firetide got me over to their booth to get the pitch.

Firetide's indoor and outdoor "Hotpoint" mesh routers create "self-configuring and self-healing" wireless backbones without having to run cables. The Hotpoints create a wireless backbone into which you connect access points to provide WLAN access or standard Ethernet devices or network segments (see diagram at left).

The current products are 11b-based and per-node priced at $799 for the 1000S indoor and $1999 for the 1000R outdoor models. The 1000R includes a weatherized NEMA Class 4 enclosure with built-in lightning protection.

For a completely different approach to mesh networking, consider OmniLux' Omni-Node. You might think that point-to-point optical networking is beyond your budget, let along a multi-node mesh approach. But Omnilux' focus on a 250 meter maximum range per hop enabled a cost-efficient design capable of handling 100Mbps duplex, low-latency traffic for - get this - $3000 per node!

The Idealab-backed company has just completed field trials of its second-generation design that includes an improved enclosure with integrated heating and cooling. The product has been in the field for about a year at multiple locations in the U.S., Greece and other countries.

Finally, I got the chance to see Propagate Networks' AutoCell do its thing in a live demo of a multiple node network at a show press event. AutoCell turns 802.11 access points and clients into a self-organizing network capable of adjusting channel usage and device power levels to achieve a WLAN that cooperates for optimum performance vs. battling for domination of the airwaves.

One of the neatest parts of the product is the AutoCell View real-time graphic tool that shows the system in action. But, of course, the real benefit is in AutoCell's ability to create a self-organizing, fault-tolerant wireless network with automatic load balancing. The product just isn't for the big guys, either. Even if the product doesn't get included in everyone's WLAN products, those products that do include it will be automatically able to adjust to the interference caused by neighboring WLANs and keep little LANs up and running.

So far, Bluesocket, Chantry Networks, ReefEdge, Atheros and NETGEAR have signed on with Propagate, and I hope to see the product out of Beta and into real products soon. By the way, OEMs, ODMs and other companies can avail themselves of the company's recently-opened Wi-Fi Stress Center and see the product in action themselves!