Subject: [manet] research for ad hoc community networks?

From: David Young <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 13:50:47 -0500

In my community, a small band of community organizers and computer geeks
is trying to build a community network using inexpensive 802.11 radios. I
feel certain that our success will depend on our adoption of ad hoc
networking principles: We do not anticipate the magnitude of private
or governmental investment that will help us afford to individually
configure stations on the network, to buy space on radio towers for
wireless base stations, to point antennas from rooftop to base station,
or to administrate hundreds or thousands of stations. But with stations
that auto-configure their IP numbers, that tolerate ever-changing link
topologies, that discover and choose Internet gateways, we will be able to
build a network by modest expenditures (such as the cost of a computer,
radio, and omni antenna) and we will keep network administration costs
under control.

As I read the commercial literature and the scientific literature
on ad hoc networks, I am struck by two things:

 * it is difficult (for me) to infer from a routing protocol's performance
   in a "random waypoint" test how it will perform on rooftops in compact,
   semi-wooded neighborhoods of two-story homes

 * insofar as "rooftop networks" have been deployed, it is only by
   commercial ventures (MeshNetworks.com, Nokia RoofTop, others) who
   use technologies that are trade secrets, so I can draw no conclusions
   from their experience

I have the ear of some researchers in ad hoc networks on this mailing
list, so I ask you, are they any of your findings that speak directly to
the problem of networking communities from rooftops?

Will anyone advocate for a particular combination of protocols to build
a rooftop network?

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
[email-masked]     Engineering from the Right Brain
                        Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933

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