Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Authorship by Chapter
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I Introduction to 802.11
- Part II 802.11 Quality of Service
- Part III 802.11 Security
- Part IV High Throughput 802.11
- Part V 802.11 Mesh Networks
- Chapter 10 Capacity of Wireless Mesh Networks
- Chapter 11 Autonomous Mobile Mesh Networks and their Design Challenges
- Chapter 12 Service Provisioning for Wireless Mesh Networks
- Chapter 13 Metro–Scale Wi–Fi Networks
- Chapter 14 Usage and Performance Comparison of Mobile Metro Mesh Networks
- Chapter 15 First, Second and Third Generation Mesh Architectures
- Chapter 16 Wireless Mesh Networks
- Part VI 802.11/Cellular Interworking
- Part VII Coexistence
- Part VIII 802.11 Network and Radio Resource Management
- Part IX 802.11 Range
- Part X 802.11 Hardware Design
- Part XI Wi-Fi Hotspots
- Part XII Wi-Fi Applications
- Part XIII Ultra WideBand (UWB)
- Part XIV Public Wireless Broadband
- Epilogue
- Index
Chapter 16 - Wireless Mesh Networks
from Part V - 802.11 Mesh Networks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Authorship by Chapter
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I Introduction to 802.11
- Part II 802.11 Quality of Service
- Part III 802.11 Security
- Part IV High Throughput 802.11
- Part V 802.11 Mesh Networks
- Chapter 10 Capacity of Wireless Mesh Networks
- Chapter 11 Autonomous Mobile Mesh Networks and their Design Challenges
- Chapter 12 Service Provisioning for Wireless Mesh Networks
- Chapter 13 Metro–Scale Wi–Fi Networks
- Chapter 14 Usage and Performance Comparison of Mobile Metro Mesh Networks
- Chapter 15 First, Second and Third Generation Mesh Architectures
- Chapter 16 Wireless Mesh Networks
- Part VI 802.11/Cellular Interworking
- Part VII Coexistence
- Part VIII 802.11 Network and Radio Resource Management
- Part IX 802.11 Range
- Part X 802.11 Hardware Design
- Part XI Wi-Fi Hotspots
- Part XII Wi-Fi Applications
- Part XIII Ultra WideBand (UWB)
- Part XIV Public Wireless Broadband
- Epilogue
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Wireless mesh networking is rapidly gaining in popularity with a variety of users: from municipalities to enterprises, from telecom service providers to public safety and military organizations. This increasing popularity is based on two basic facts: ease of deployment and increase in network capacity expressed in bandwidth per footage.
So what is a mesh network? Simply put, it is a set of fully interconnected network nodes that support traffic flows between any two nodes over one or more paths or routes. Adding wireless to the above brings the additional ability to maintain connectivity while the network nodes are in motion. The Internet itself can be viewed as the largest scale mesh network formed by hundreds of thousands of nodes connected by fiber or other means, including, in some cases, wireless links.
In this chapter we will look more closely into wireless mesh networks.
History
Mesh networking goes back a long time; in fact tactical networks of the military have relied on stored and forward nodes with multiple interconnections since the early days of electronic communications. The advent of packet switching allowed the forwarding function of these networks to be buried in the lower layers of communication systems, which opened up many new possibilities of improving the capacity and redundancy of these networks. Attracted by the inherent survivability of mesh networks, the US Defense research agency DARPA has funded a number of projects aimed at creating a variety of high-speed mesh networking technologies that support troop deployment on the battlefield as well as low speed, high survival sensor networks.
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- Emerging Technologies in Wireless LANsTheory, Design, and Deployment, pp. 329 - 350Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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