Funny, the Meraki Mini is promising what Community Wireless Networks promised a few years ago.

http://wireless.org.au/

I remember being quite excited by the idea of what was essentially ‘out of band’ internets linking up with each other to create large meshes. There were some fabulous stories about towns between Melbourne and Adelaide linking up. They never quite got all the way but the thought was amazing.

A quick surf around and it looks like many of these community networks may have fallen by the wayside. Perhaps the Meraki Mini might break through to critical mass by being simpler and cheaper.

Of course there are other examples too. My friend in Russia is quite enthusiastic about the miles of CAT5 that he and his neighbours string up between houses in his local community. Out in the weather, attached to power line poles, I asked if he gets any heat from the authorities. He says most people in his community cannot afford Internet connections so the local government have turned a blind eye to the CAT5.

Peering between local ISP’s, although not exactly a mesh network, is an example of networking that avoids the public backbones of the Internet. WAIX in Western Australia is a good example and end users operate their own private peer to peer filesharing networks within WAIX because it is generally uncapped bandwidth.

http://www.waia.asn.au/waix/

It will be interesting to see how it pans out. Drop me a line if you wish to discuss. I’ll have my Meraki Mini ready to receive.

Finno