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Mesh: Interference in the City?
By Larry Hendrick | September 30, 2006
Dan Jones at Unstrung writes this article on some of the physical problems that mesh wifi networks are experiencing. I alluded to this a few time, but his article goes into depth, and quotes industry specialists who are trying to solve the problems.
The analogy that comes to my mind is from the ’70s. Truckers used CB radios to communicate on the highways, and everything was good. Then the popularity of the CB radio moved into the civilian sector and, early on, things were still good, but as the user base increased, the usability of the radio decreased.
When I got my first CB radio, the noise level ran about 3 on a scale of 10, but by the time I removed it a few years later, the noise level, you had to talk above, was an 8 on the same scale. More and more radios didn’t make the service better, it caused interference to the point of uselessness, not usefulness. Yes, I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but you get my point.
Unstrung - WLANs/WiFi/802.11 - Mesh: Interference in the City? - Wireless Networking News Analysis
If you’ve been to a tech conference recently you’ll know that congestion and interference on the 2.4GHz band is a real issue. The sheer number of WiFi signals in the air — coupled with other devices and appliances using the same public frequency — can make it hard to get and stay connected to an 802.11 link.(See N I: Noise Report.)
Now imagine the same scenario on a citywide WiFi mesh network and you’ll see why many informed observers are warning that that municipal mesh networks will be plagued by wireless congestion and interference, slowing connection speeds to dial-up levels.
Topics: WiFi |
August 14th, 2007 at 9:31 am
[...] exposes more of the truth about these deployments. The article covers many of the same aspects I have discussed before, but adds a quote by Andy Abramson about the Tropos mesh networks. GigaOM MuniFi, VoIP & Great [...]