While this may not seem like great news to many of you – it did get me quite excited. I have always maintained that setting up a Wi Fi Mesh is not too difficult if the topography is not too varied and the Line of Sight is clear because equipment (with powerful dual radios) today is quite sophisticated and even antenna options (patch, sector, grid) are quite varied. We still did not have a full fledged Wi – Fi Mesh in India for quite a while!

Manipal University has implemented a Wi Fi Mesh, which spreads across 5 sq km can support 15, 000 subscribers. The university plans to implement streaming video, e-library and video on demand in a phased manner. Video Streaming can be done through wired or wireless cameras, the e – library can be made using a NAS with permissions and video on demand can be delivered through the intranet at speeds that can probably go up to 500 Mbps (depending on their equipment).

Im quite disappointed by the size of this Mesh – it seems quite tiny. A mesh convering an entire city would be an engineering marvel. To make a mesh within a campus is like a piece of cake. I wrote previously about how I think only a company like Bharati or Reliance can create a wireless mesh in city like Mumbai or Delhi. That’s because the rent for putting up a Wi – Fi/ Wi – Max Tower is ridiculously expensive. You may have to pay a building in lakhs just to host the infrastructure. Buildings are demanding such astronomical sums because the price has been ‘fixed’ by the biggies such as Bharati and Reliance who offer such amounts for putting up cell phone towers. It thus becomes unsustainable for a Medium sized company to compete and create a mesh. Mid sized companies can thus look at simply being infrastructure providers as a part of their business model or looking at getting ISP licenses in Class B and C towns and look at creating a market there before the big guys come in. But again services is another model altogether which requires a lot of micro processes; and im not sure if a company that is geared as an infrastructure provider can meet service related needs.

Have a look at the diagram below to get a good idea of how wireless mesh networking works.

The Advantages of a Mesh Network Are:

Quick scalability: Add devices to the IP network instantly without adding wiring and redoing infrastructure

Add Bandwidth and Network Throughput: Increase the speed of the wireless network by  simply adding and plugging in devices.

No Single Point of Failure: Unlike wired networks where a single wire getting cut can bring down an entire network a Wireless Mesh network creates a cluster of nodes connecting to multiple other nodes offering no single passage for failure.

Fault Tolerance: By using state-of-the-art Mesh Networking Technology your network becomes failure proof as each node on the network automatically scans and connects to several other nodes creating a multi-path mesh on the network for complete redundancy.

Add Value Enhancing Features: Add features to the network by simply adding Network enabled devices anywhere you choose without wiring and redoing infrastructure. E.g. add an IP Surveillance Camera, or a videoconferencing/VoIP workstation anywhere on the premises instantly. 

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