Strategic Information Systems Planning

Course Project

Part I

Mesh Networking

Mesh networking was developed at MIT in to provide a method of wireless networking that is cheap , easily configurable and has a wide line-of-sight range . One of the first implementations of mesh networking was in Cambridge , MA on the MIT campus . The project was intended to explore the feasibility of non-municipal , independent wireless networks The project , named Roofnet , was a multi-hop 802 .11b mesh network , with a number of rooftop nodes acting as forwarding points the nodes within radio range can communicate with each

other directly , with communication of out-of-sight nodes taking place via multi-hop forwarding (Aguayo 2003 ) The nodes were designed with off the shelf hardware and open source software , allowing for a fast , cheap implementation of the network . A specialized routing protocol called SrcRR attempts to find high-throughput nodes with non-marginal signal in to propagate network traffic through the most connected nodes . Roofnet was intended to grow organically , with gaps naturally being filled as service variations were found and corrected

The success of Roofnet led to a city-wide municipal mesh network being established in Cambridge , MA , allowing users to access the Internet at other points than established wireless network points or hot spots . The service limitations were addressed by pre-seeing nodes on tall buildings and on utility poles (Savage

Mesh networking has the capability to provide connectivity to last mile ' users in rural areas and to provide cheap , usable Internet access in poor areas . It is the networking protocol deployed on children 's laptops , or laptops designed by MIT students and staff for distribution to children in developing areas in to provide technology and knowledge transfer . The hardware , though initially expensive , has been reduced in price to make implementation on a small budget feasible (Merritt , 2005 . Mesh networking can also provide access for other situations , such as the aforementioned public area networks It has the capability to redefine network access from its current luxury status to a public utility , making a significant change to the IS paradigm and profit model

Mesh networking addresses also both a structural and functional limitation of IS - namely , the requirement for infrastructure planning for formal networks . Structurally , there is no requirement for planned WAP locations , connection testing and verification or other complicated setup . Because the network grows organically rather than being planned it will tend to develop in areas where access is required without use of resources in areas where access is not required

Mesh networking is also less expensive than other forms of wireless access , creating a feasible way of providing a large number of connections to a shared broadband Internet access point for a small community . The cost of the hardware is low , meaning that it can be implemented cheaply in areas where hardware cost is a deciding factor including in rural areas and developing countries . No increase in infrastructure is required to support the network in most areas . The shallow technical learning curve , free and open source software and inclusive nature...