Wireless Mesh

Contact using LinkedIN.com

2008-07-23T16:26:00.001-04:00

A few of you have linked with me using linkedIN.com Just want to say your welcome! Don

One response

2008-07-22T19:25:00.002-04:00

Nope I need more responses. Find your favorite wireless mesh blog entry add your comment. Either you like it, or you have a different view, or you want me to stop or what ever you want to comment on, I will accept. The only statistic I have is how many hits I get on these websites. I don't ask for names, or location but it would help me know how you feel.

Hopefully I asking, no begging you please interact. I need add least 50 responses to this blog. Can you help?

Thanks

Don

How to on Open 802.11S

2008-07-18T07:29:00.001-04:00

For everyone that is interested check out Open802.11s org how to pages. Just for review this version is available on newest linux kernel.

New Generation of Wireless Mesh

2008-07-18T07:17:00.003-04:00

In September is it will be five years working on Locustworld's wireless mesh using AODV.

On the wireless front, the new kernel includes support for 802.11s, the draft standard for wireless mesh networking. With mesh networking each node on the network acts a relay for each other, promising higher redundancy and better throughput.

This new generation of wireless mesh will be available for all distro of Linux. Does this mean another five years of experimentation?

OK so I said to myself over 200 blog entries on wireless mesh is enough, eh?

2008-07-17T19:16:00.004-04:00

Over two hundred blog entries on Wireless Mesh. Ok maybe I aint the best writer in the world and I only have under 10,000 of you guys and gals reading this per month with no response. None what so ever. I promised myself that I would slow down and let everyone have a chance to read but some of my work is already dated. So I am going back to add a paragraph here and word there and maybe even think of publishing some of this wireless mesh articles.

I've just updated my most popular article Wireless Mesh Topology. I can say that after 4 years there is over 100,000 unique ip address that have hit this page. It is linked to many websites and once was put into wikipedia as an external link (now gone.) It is for that reason that I started to update a few of the articles.

Sincerely,

Don Moskaluk

Array-AP

2008-05-07T21:50:00.003-04:00

Finally after 5 years of prototyping and testing I've put a winning combination together! This industrial open hardware device can run as an access point or wireless mesh cluster.

Moskaluk Array-AP comes with VIA Eden-V4 processors with speeds of 1GHz using a 400MHz front size bus and a DDR2 SO-DIMM socket accommodating up to 1GB memory & 4 GB or more of HD, offering 18-20% increased network performance levels when compared with VIA Eden-based appliances. The unit does not require any active cooling, offering much higher reliability and longer life span compared with existing network platforms.

The four Ethernet connections can connect to the Internet using an Ethernet connection and can be linked to other application sources linked servers or other radio devices. At one point I was thinking to remove the radio card out of the device and only have a firmware control the other radio devices; however, I saw that a basic Wi-Fi device was needed. I’m not sure if I will be offering various radio cards but the device uses mini-PCI cards and is flexible to modify.

Evolving to the Next Level

2008-05-07T21:42:00.002-04:00

When I build a prototype I normally don’t “wow” myself until I build the Array-AP. Not only did I meet my expectations I exceeded them to possibly creating the next generation of Internet using a wireless mesh. When you look at the new Array-AP it doesn’t appear to be different other than any other MeshAP other than the 1u rack mount option. In fact the pundits would say it is just an embedded system with a 802.11b radio card and 4 Ethernet ports and at the price of $600 - $800 US it better do something else then simply route using wireless mesh. They would also say that because this is an industrial solution that this in itself would exceed any commercial-off-the-shelf wireless AP. But when you design hardware to meet Municipal standards you shouldn’t be building components using PC type equipment. The fact that most Muni AP routers will be continuously on needs specialized industrial embedded hardware. But Array-AP’s unique combination of Wireless Mesh, Virtualization, Supercomputer, and by also providing Software as a Service (SaaS) it starts to turn heads. The combination is called MVSS.

The physical hardware on Array-AP will meet or exceed many expectations regarding a wireless mesh. The single 802.11b (Prism chipset) radio card will not turn a single head when 802.11N is the new standard. Having a single radio card in the unit will not make this compete with the likes of units that can handle up to 8 different radio cards. The idea for a single radio card is to use that radio card to access the service solution. Traditional AODV routing will be done with a combination of aggregation or clustering using MeshAP, wireless Bridge, Free Space Optics, Fibre Optics, or other types of Metropolitan backbone technology either in licensed or unlicensed operation. That means your wired or wireless mesh can exceed 1 Gbps.

The Array-AP limitations are 100BT Ethernet ports and a single 802.11B radio card. What on earth was I thinking when I built this unit? Well the solution was to build a wired router using Locustworld v1311. So I did I built a 2 Ethernet port MeshAP with an 802.11B radio card. I basically replaced my current off the shelf wireless router with this unit and I found tremendous benefit when integrating wireless mesh right down to the injection level. Quality of Service (QoS) improves the Telephony operation as well as the IPTV operations. QoS is now at the edge of the service application support for wireless mesh. This becomes the ultimate for triple or quadruple play network environments.

The Array-AP starts to stand out not only from a physical construction but also from configuration. Most wireless MeshAP’s is built with less than 500 MHz and 64 Megs of RAM and disk space. Because of their small footprint they can easily be embedded into different hardware such as PC Engine or Via Mini-ITX boards. The Array-AP runs at 1 GHz and has over 4 Gig of disk space and 1 Gig of ram. This is truly unique solid-state construction.

The idea came to me based on the CERN supercomputer and utilizing VMware to provide other application services within a Wireless Mesh router. The problem is that many people require faster “Last Mile” networking, meaning that people want faster Internet connections. What CERN did was to combine High Performance Clustering (HPC) with a dedicated network. The access to this super computer did not require more than a dial connection because the supercomputer was being accessed with X windows. Ok, so if you have 100 to 1000 of the Array-APs you can start utilizing the access computing to build the same network mesh network giving your client the ability to utilize the entire mesh array as one big computer hence the name Array-AP. I figure if you are building out ISP you might as well build out the next generation of Internet.

I believe that this should be a plug and play type scenario. Once you have decided on your operation that deploying it should be as easy as plugging it in and watching your MVSS grow.

The neat idea about integrating a supercomputer into a wireless mesh access point is that as the technology comes and goes it can be utilized from the basic dialup internet connection to the latest technology offering. To see more of the Array-AP please see Going to the Next Level.

Bubble Deployment

2008-05-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

Fixing the Muni Wireless Mesh is not going to be any small order. As early adopters many Muni Wireless Mesh have fallen short to providing complete coverage and operations. These deployments range for bad design to problem equipment and everything in between. Most situations can fix by either adding more or rearranging the deployment. Developing new best practices can help for wireless mesh deployment can help municipalities to fix and finish there deployments. One of the unique solutions to fix a Muni Wireless Mesh is to deploy the mesh bubble in small section in and around an area. Bubble deployment is more of a prototype phase. Deploying the wireless mesh in a community and figuring out the problems prior to deploying it as an end state solution would be with in best practices of any Project Management methodology. This best practice was some how forgotten in the wireless mesh deployment. Wireless Mesh has a bloody nose but the bleeding will eventually be stopped.

Innovative solutions for network optimization and internet acceleration

2008-04-10T15:50:00.001-04:00

Ok so I read an article that was new and innovative. I then went out and research it and found more information. I then thought wow this is the next generation of the internet. The first thing is how to put a business model together then I remember a commercial on TV regarding snow boarders. The gist of the commercial was "we weren’t just making a snow board we were inventing a new sport." Similar to this the person was not inventing anything new but putting together a new solution that created an awesome new way to deliver the new internet.

Now just to recap back in the early Ninety’s most people got access to the internet via a dial up 56Kbps connection, and for business and governments there were offering from Frame Relay, T1, and other commercial offering. The brought the speed to roughly 1.5 MBPS and the backbone was roughly 100 MBPS.

Now the internet has involved in terms of service offering bring larger bandwidths in Toronto Dial UP still prevails however it has been overtaken by DSL and Cable connections. Business our still relied on Frame Relay, T1, OC3, Dark Fibre any where from 1.5 all the way up to 40 GBPS or higher.

Now with today’s current technology CERN has come up with a network and servers speed that can be measured in Petaflop. A Petaflop is a measure of a computer's processing speed and can be expressed as a thousand trillion floating point operations per second. FLOPS are floating-point operations per second. Floating-point is considered to be a method of encoding real numbers within the limits of finite precision available on computers. Using floating-point encoding, extremely long numbers can be handled relatively easily.

So I hope that you are still with me regarding Petaflop. Petaflop is a huge number and we are still dealing with dialup connections with Internet. Today we are always looking for greater bandwidth to download or to capture information in order that our computers can process it. The architecture is either 2 tiers or 3 tiers. We always need more bandwidth grow because we our CPU are growing in our computers. As computer power increase so does the delivery system to the internet. But that is the way it is.

Now back to the guys from CERN. Well they built a supercomputer and use fibre network to connect the entire cluster computer estimated to be at 250,000 computer world wide to produce these speeds. The combination of all these computers and the dedicated fibre optic networks produces these types of speeds and the system itself. There isn’t a name for combining the internet and cluster computers to provide this type of unique service! So her goes I’ll name it Clustered Computer with Integrated Network or CCIN.

I read in one of the articles that all that is required to access this system is a simple 56K dialup line. Since the client doesn’t need CPU at it machine to process all you need is a monitor and input devices like speakers, keyboard and mouse and you have access Petaflop worth of computing power? But before you start jumping up and down the concept of the internet acts more like a mainframe than a PC. Your data is shared. So in laymen’s terms those MP3 wouldn’t be coming down the pipe anytime soon. You could only access them through your device. Basically the information is shared. What it sound like is that you would use X window technology to gain access to it. So will the next big thing be a whole bunch of X window appliances?

No, it gets better than this. So I figure hey with 802.11B you could have a lot of X windows devices running off a clustered of Linux boxes. So instead of everyone trying to download the latest jazz album maybe giving them access to a supercomputer would be better. So it doesn’t mater where you are all you need to get is an X window environment. That means you would give them Software as a Service. That means you could give them unlimited types of software to run and access. But the greatest part is the 802.11B Wi-Fi connection is all you ever going to need. (I laugh at myself at that last statement because it sure sound like Bill Gates saying that all you every going to need is 640 k.) No I think that was too much 56 kbps for should be enough for the next ten years.

But wait this gets much better. So before you go out and start building a supercomputer and offering services I figure I go and research if any companies are doing this. Sure enough my idea is not unique and that some companies are trying to do the same thing. Have a quick read on this service http://www.arteraturbo.com/main.asp?Nav_Bar=15 should we be building supercomputer for the wireless mesh? Yeah I think so!

So can you read the headline Wireless Mesh Speed break world record and exceed Petaflop speeds. Yeah having access to a supercomputer be neat what be better if you were mobile and had access to a supercomputer. Now I can see everyone going out and Googling HPC cluster open and viola they find the Rock.

I can hear my buddy from Vancouver say “Long Live Beowulf” (sort of inside joke that a movie was called Bewoulf and the first single system image has the same name.)

It just another form of Control

2008-03-31T16:05:00.000-04:00

Traffic shaping also known as "packet shaping" is an attempt to control computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, lower latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth by delaying packets that meet a certain criteria. Using Locustworld, traffic shaping is any action on a set of packets which imposes additional delay on those packets such that they conform to some predetermined constraint a contract or traffic profile.

Traffic shaping provides a means to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network in a specified period using bandwidth throttling, or the maximum rate at which the traffic is sent which rate is limiting. This control can be accomplished in many ways and for many reasons; however traffic shaping is always achieved by delaying packets. Traffic shaping is commonly applied at the network edges to control traffic entering the network, but can also be applied by the traffic source for example, computer or network card or by an element in the network.

Traffic policing is the distinct but related practice of packet dropping and packet marking. An example of why you want to utilize traffic shaping is providing Quality of Service (QoS.) My recent focus and interest has been improving and providing carrier class wireless network. This is partly motivated by a requirement for an Internet Protocol Quality of Service (IP QoS) solution to allow us to converge our video, voice and data networks with in the Mesh Network.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has been asked to investigate the impact of "traffic shaping" by Internet service providers (ISPs) on Canadian Internet users. http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=82157&issue=03312008

Simply put one must utilize a form of control if the goal is to provide QoS for streaming media then it is required on a share network; however, when traffic shaping is utilize to restrict the usage for non QoS application and it is utilized for non QoS but for bandwidth control then these practices and the implications for consumers should be advised appropriately. Since this practice has been utilized for years it important not to debate on traffic shaping but to debate how the consumer or client is affected by such controls. It’s funny how when you subscribe to a service for years, how the service evolves to the point that general consumers are impacted.

Doctor, Doctor

2008-03-28T14:21:00.002-04:00

Yes Hello,

-Our plan was to bring Wi-Fi to the city using wireless mesh and we have run out of money.

What happened?

-Well we we're sure and we put to tender and RFP that we awarded. When it came to implementing we wanted to be sure that we could managed this and ensure that our customers would get the best possible service.

Then what happened?

-Well, we started to deploy and we ran into some problems.

What type of problems?

-Well we couldn't get the coverage and the bandwidth to all the people so we need to buy more equipment.

So how much did you originally budgeted for?

-We went with the lowest bidder and we ensure that we follow ITIL methodology.

Hmmm, I see and now?

-Can you help?

Did you use best practice prior to deployment?

-No?

Oh so you are paying not only for best practices but to build out a wireless mesh?

-I'm not following?

So the cost to have all the right practices far out weighed the cost of deployment?

-I suppose so.

Hmmm.

-What does that mean?

Is your Wi-Fi working today?

-Yes it great but it's like TV all those channels and nothing on. But Doctor what about the cost to deploy the remaining network.

If it is working today are you starting to see a return on investment?

Not yet.

Why do you want to continue this path?

Because this is the methodology we deployed and we can't change it now

Excuse me why I try to kiss the sky

2008-03-23T20:10:00.002-04:00

So about 3 years ago I was really interested how municipalities would implement wifi specifically wireless mesh into cities such as Phili, San Frasisco and even my hometown Toronto. After reading the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/22wireless.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

I can see why all of these failed. In Toronto the idea was to get people to buy into Muni wi-fi as if it was a service provider; with Phili they didn’t use my bandwidth allocation and found out that they need more repeaters than they thought and with San Francisco well who knows.

Now if you had read about 3 years ago I really criticized the city of Toronto with the deployment of the wireless mesh using best practices, since there was not enough information on the mesh to formulate best practices or any standards around the mesh. But this blog is not about “I told you so” but for best practices using wireless mesh I know I’m right and my colleagues who have built wireless meshes all around the world do know how to deploy this successfully.

But this article is not about wireless mesh but it is about deploying an ISP. We learn from the early dial up days that deploying Internet was to oversubscribe. Today with the technology although this is still being done the over subscription model doesn’t work.

In my paper on deploying a metropolitan Internet services provider I indicated that you would need a host of services everything from VoIP, IPTV, Gaming, MTU, etc. Keeping my paths of revenue coming was the key. I guess that technology was on the Municipalities and the cost for deployment was started to become astronomical. So focusing on the main services such as applications wasn’t on people minds.

Now also I just read in Commsday web site that Wimax pioneer also said that they are too are having a problem but this time it wasn’t deployment but with the actual technology. http://www.commsday.com/node/228 Wireless is having a bad taste in people mouths because of early adopters.

Now if everyone can remember there was suppose to a wireless standard IEEE was working on. This was to ensure that everyone using wireless mesh in regardless of the type of equipment or manufacturer of that equipment. Well we are still waiting for them to ratify this technology.

Mean while the use of 802.11N and IP6 is becoming more mainstream and the early pioneers of wireless mesh or not consolidating but starting to feel the pain of the early adopters. I also started to notice a few years ago that there were instant experts on the Muni front giving consulting advice. I was very concern when I saw this for wireless mesh as the crowned so call experts hadn’t even had the experience of putting up a wireless mesh.

Now that we are going on to 5 years of hosting wireless mesh in a small corner of Toronto I can say now that the technology is sound and it time to put some standards in place that make sense.

What would I do differently? Well first to get profit you need to different streams of revenue. Lets say:

ILEC - VoIP

Cable TV using IPTV technology

Gaming site – Poker, to Xbox

Web, email, web, data transfer, VPN

Security –Video

Video Conferencing

Unified Communication

Integrated Services and Private Networks

E-commerce, Dept and Credit Card services.

Just to name a few. These are business that need to be built first they all then can be tied together using wireless mesh. The provider should either charge based on transactional basis or by flat fee. Nevertheless the establishment of commerce using this technology is paramount. Unless of course you are making a Community based wireless system and then you would need to share all the charges including depreciation of the mesh to make it work. Bottom line you need identify your revenue stream to make this work and I believe that people in Muni game may have failed to recognize this model.

Carrier Class Wireless Mesh Application for VoIP

2008-03-03T09:54:00.001-05:00

By its architecture and topology Wireless Mesh can handle carrier class services; however, when adding and application like VoIP downtime is not an option and requires fully redundancy. Feb. 2008 I attend Toronto Asterisk User Group (TAUG) meeting. And out of the meeting was to provide a rudimentary fault tolerant system that could provide 5 9’s i.e. 99.999% uptime for Asterisk Telephony solution. Now if you have read any of the previous blog articles you can see that putting in application like Telephony into a wireless mesh will not make the application automatically fault tolerant.

The application it self requires to have some redundancy. During the meeting I was introduced to three open source products:

• Heartbeat application from www.linux-ha.org
• csync2 from oss.linbit.com/csync2/(for cluster replication
• OpenSER from www.Openser.org a loading balancing device for SIP calls

The product from OpenSER is amazing if you want to have a complete load balance fault tolerant system that can handle 5000 simultaneously this is the product. However for mesh network the Heartbeat application and csync2 application can be used for a host of different product and it is not only design for Asterisk solution using Linux but any Linux solution.

Linux-HA Heartbeat provides sophisticated high-availability failover capabilities for Linux platforms. How it works is that you have two devices that you synchronized together using csync2. This creates the master and slave of the two applications that sit on two Linux boxes.

Now Heartbeat application creates a unique IP address for the two boxes. Which everyone is the master the IP address is assign, in the event of that the master loose connectivity the IP address is reassign to the slave box. To see the actual presentation Check out TAUG will give you a better explanation.

Nevertheless both heartbeat and csysnc2 are pretty good products that can help any Linux application become fault tolerant. However, modern solutions are to have high availability load balancing with no single point of failure. For building such system check out the OpenSER.

Oh we were thinking like a WISP and not like a TV Station.

2008-02-21T16:56:00.001-05:00

Reverse the realm manager dogma may give a new type of service to wireless mesh.
Lets say you want to give a restrict services on the wireless mesh; in other words, you only want people to surf to your content and not the web. Think of it as going to a single website and on the website is only information you want to provide. Using LW MeshAP last mile (see last mile and splash page customization) you can create unlimited channels by using ESSID, channel and Locustworld wireless mesh using the Splash Page. Restrict the use of the wireless mesh to only application that you provide such as IPTV, VOIP, etc. So you can have MeshAP for VoIP on an ESSID, you can have another ESSID for IPTV; you can have another ESSID for Portal, radio or what ever. As long as you control the mesh you can provide a new service using ESSID like the old fashion TV stations. Can you image people saying “I wonder what is playing on ESSID?” Channel surfing will have a new name.

Ok here is a scenario let’s say you want to create a new type of public telephone booth using wireless mesh. As people use there web browser and Wi-Fi connection to connect to the MeshAP the splash page hijacks the web request for authentication; however, I want to add a Click to Call on the splash page i.e. page that comes up when to authenticate into a wireless mesh will have the Click to call hyperlink. This service would give the person the ability to use mesh but only for VoIP. It can use any of the types click to call; however, the scenario would required a QOS. Since QOS is based on user authentication and the splash page has not authenticated you how would you ensure that the call would get priority in LW? Not sure? Well I was thinking to do something in reverse to mesh dogma such that reversing the roles in realm manager. For use of the mesh for surfing the internet you would get something really low like 64K for a member account; however, if you use an application on the splash page like IPTV or VoIP you would need to put priority on the “unknown” account. Let say you build a portal on the splash page with flash files for IPTV and links to VoIP with in your mesh then only giving access to people to the network if they want too.

So what is Click to Call?

Click to call is starting a new type of disruption technology. It combines the use of VoIP application, with either a thin client Web phone or standard phone and hyperlink on a web page. As you click on the hyperlink the phone connects you to either a specific destination or can link two parties together.

What the difference between Click-To-Call and Standard Telephone?

A standard telephone call may consist of an ordinary voice transmission using a telephone, a data transmission when the calling party and called party are using modems, or a facsimile transmission when the two parties are using fax machines. Calls are usually placed through a network (such as the Public Switched Telephone Network) provided by a commercial telephone company or also through VoIP carriers. Most telephone calls in the world are set up using ISUP messages or one of its variants between telephone exchanges to establish the end to end connection. Typical examples would be a device calling Direct Inward Dial (DID) or telephone number. These devices are known today as:
- Wired Telephone
- Wireless Telephone VoIP or Cell Phone
- Soft Phone VOIP
- Hard Phone VOIP
- Web Phone VOIP using web browser (JAVA, FLASH, ETC)

Click-to-call (CTC) refers to the process of converting web-based traffic into direct telephony communication between an end user and some other entity. CTC processes vary depending upon platforms, but there are many styles of CTC:

- The first style uses the computer to complete the call (typically VoIP using a web phone.) Call is made from a soft phone or program on the same website to a specific number called Web Click-to-Call (WCTC).

- Another style of CTC is the callback, where a user enters their standard telephone number and an intermediary service connects the end user to respective third party. In this implementation, these services tend to be more of an automatic dialing service than an actual "click-to-call”. Call is made by connecting two standard telephone numbers to another standard telephone which is called Standard Click to Call (SCTC).

- The third version of this is a combination of WCTC and SCTC in which the Call is made by connecting two lines to Standard telephone number that is given by user to a specific number that has been program or the Call is made by connecting two lines from a soft phone on website to standards telephone number that is given by user called Hybrid Click to Call (HCTC).

So what does this all mean?

It means that you can now have public content and restricted the traffic on your mesh and use it a service. New application like Click-to-Call could benefit from this combination of these technologies.

Mongolian Wireless Mesh

2008-01-30T17:51:00.000-05:00

So you think you can make an unlimited node wireless mesh, think again. Check out what happen in Mongolia.

New to Wireless Mesh

2008-01-27T11:54:00.000-05:00

From time to time I get people asking for help with wireless mesh. Although I have written many DIY articles or even provide suggestion on how to fix problems I still get the person looking for my expertise. Most of them just need help to get started. With all the people out there willing to offer help on open source wireless mesh; getting started should be pretty easy. But with many options in introductory documents and easy-to-install distributions, choosing a place to start can be the hard part.

Where to Find Support

Picking a distribution gets a lot less challenging when you remember to choose based on where you plan to go for help. Your local user group mailing list will be a lot more useful when other members know the locations and utilities you're talking about. Just subscribe to your local user group mailing list, and lurk for a while to find out what distribution the most helpful people their use. Then pick up a good wireless mesh distro, burn an install CD, and jump in.

There is lots of useful online documentation for specific tasks. But so far, books offer the best introductions to basic concepts such as file permissions or working with the shell. Oops what there are no Wireless Mesh Books for open source mesh? So you have to investigate what the Linux distribution is and then looking for the distribution's name in the title of your first Linux book can be a time and frustration saver for new users. Instead of telling you to do things this way on one distribution, that way on another, or worse, telling you to find things for yourself, a book that concentrates on one distribution can point you straight to the file, tool or feature you need. Ok so if there aren’t any books then you should know at least the Linux kernel you are about to use. Most open source projects have a catch many of the participants in user groups and mailing lists that offer the best help for new users.

Mainstream Linux Advantages

Part of Locustworld's popularity among user group members is because it nails down many of the best system administration practices. A new user who installs Locustworld and does things the Locustworld way will find him or she acting in many ways like a cautious, experienced Network Administrator without realizing it. Now, using Moskaluk.com you can get a thorough while still drawing on the author's long experience with old-school Unix and older Linux environments to cover the basics that haven't changed.

Top Tools Putty & Winscp

One tool that gets too little coverage in most Locustwold for new users is OpenSSH. As the administrator of network node, you'll use it for all kinds of remote administration tasks.

I hope this helps but you can also google for Locustworld documentation

The challenge of Video Conference

2008-01-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

Oh back in 2001 I wrote a Master Thesis on the Challenge of Video Conference . Now this paper was inspire by the type of work I did in 90's. Lately I have seen a lot of people downloading this paper and I assume it was students. Now the paper is full of politics and technical observations regarding Video Conference.

A number of years previous to that paper I was running an IT department for a major software company in the US. In the Canadian division we had 5 locations of which two where used for development. At that time we used Frame Relay to connect the two offices together. The offices were hundreds of kilometres apart. What I did was to setup using Net meeting a video conference between both locations. These were simple cameras at that time and each conference room in each city had a work station that would broadcast a Net meeting. So if you can image walking into a room and see your staff on the video it was like talking to Max Headroom.

Since we had the luxury of having two dedicated meeting rooms with video conferencing, I noticed that my staff would hang out in these two rooms all day. They would bring in there laptops and talk between cities as if they were talking between two people.

The synergy that this created was the feeling of having one team. As the company expanded a second location was added and I add the video conference to a fairly large server room. Again my staff took to it and felt like having a video conference 8 hours a day 5 days week was starting to be a good thing. Friendships started to form and I really thought that this was the wave of the future. I thought that everyone was doing this in there companies. First yes people are having video conference but not 8 hours a day. Second now with bandwidth constrains this would be extremely costly today.

Now the connection between the sites was limited to bandwidth and because we only used the bandwidth for very large file transfer off hours and for email and surfing we utilized the bandwidth for communication.

Since that time I have worked in a number of different location and nobody had used video conference as room extension. Most video conferences are either for only short conversations or meetings. Most people who never even dream of having video conference call 5 days a week i.e. always on.

Now my youngest son had a video camera on his PC and from time to time he has video call with his friends as they play an on line game. What I noticed is that they too use the room as extension to the other person house. The bandwidth is now compressed and video and voice is very good.

Ok so you probably at this time asking what this has to do with wireless Mesh, well, I don't know. Ok I do know. Many Wireless Mesh Companies provide cameras to their Wireless Mesh maybe for security or webcast or what ever. It's an extension of the area they covering. Most of the time it is boring and nothing to see other than a bird flying towards the camera. These cameras are on for 24 hours, 7 days a week 365 days a week. That is impressive. The cost to run this minor. Today in Canada a few cell phone companies are providing video conference through their client cell phone. This too is impressive but costly. Most people would not have a conference call on the cell phone for over 5 minutes. It would be cost prohibitive.

Can Video Conference run on a Mesh 24-7? You bet. Can you now imagine the social implication of have a permanent Video Conference running on a wireless mesh? Awesome.

Can you imagine taking a flat panel TV and adding a video conference component and living it on so that you can watch you buddy from his house? That was outrageous but Extreme Video Conferencing is coming to a mesh near you.

VM images for Locustworld

2008-01-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

First thing I should apologies for this blog as it was written in the middle of night and at the time I thought it was brilliant, now I reread it, what the hell was I thinking. I’ll let you decide.

The basis of the ideas is to get Locustworld off dedicated computers and start running them under VMware. Now this is not the brilliant part but because of the small storage and frame it would make a wonderful VMware image. As you know I use Locustworld OS to run my wireless mesh network. The opportunity is to have Locustworld software imbedded into applications. You know like Wireless Mesh 2.0.

But first a little history, my first experience with Locustworld was booting off a CD and having it run on a ram disk. Now VMware is not your daddy’s RAMdisk. I thought that this setup was brilliant in the fact that you could operate it from any machine; however, this wasn’t case. The RAMdisk did not perform well and I’m not sure anyone used it.

VMware with Locustworld would be great for a number of reasons. The first is to have less equipment especially for uplink nodes. Having Locustworld embedded into various network applications and other application would not only be truly great it would also have QOS write to the application server. This was brilliant part. I know, I know I will work on my idea a little more.

So what does this all mean? Well imagine you have a small town and let’s call it Smalltown. And in this town we have say a town of savy Computer people. Now the town has been around for about 100 years and the infrastructure is dated, especially telecommunication, TV, etc. So the town people got together and said lets invest into a wireless mesh network, and they did (could this be Bigtown MUNI mesh?) They put wireless nodes up and were able to put uplink nodes everywhere. Smalltown people were very happy. They could get access to internet from every part of the town.

Now Smalltown people where very wise and ensure that they had all security setup and people also had bandwidth controls. But the demand for bandwidth was growing. The problem was not the wireless mesh network but the uplink nodes acting as funnels to the internet. Smalltown people want to act like the Bigtown people so they bought more bandwidth and soon they realized that they two were like Bigtown people with Bigtown problems. They had all the problem of Bigtown web 2.0.

Now the Smalltown people thought they can too setup some services like Bigtown web 2.0 people by providing some local services. New services like VoIP (telephony) started and Smalltown Telephone Company started. Then a new company start IPTV too started to provide services with in Smalltown Mesh. Then some of the town people started to build their own web commerce site and too have mesh access. But the town did not have many resources. The Smalltown had PC’s and they access wireless mesh cloud. They wanted more bandwidth for their little wireless mesh.

But the Smalltown couldn’t afford to put in more wireless nodes. So they ask for people to donate their old computers to build up the network and have more channels available to use. Smalltown were savvy people and never junked their old computers. They used them to play Pong with. So they thought if they all could share a bit of their computer resources with everyone that the can setup a virtual network. Well let’s call it VMware Network. They could use there machines as next layer of network having more paths and bandwidth. Now Smalltown had the same problem like Bigtown in which many different operating systems and hardware where used. So they used VMplayers in each machine and setup a new mesh cloud.

So if you can imagine that PC’s could run Locustworld in VMware that a whole new type of network could start from existing equipment. Secondary Mesh network not only within the immediate premise like a personal area network (PAN) but extended to other neighbors as well.

So you can have a PAN with in your home or business connecting to main wireless mesh. That means person application can be hosted with in the town. This distributed model is very different from what we have today. Most hosting companies have 7 by 24 total redundant systems. Even if a mini host facility was added to this system the VMware using Locustworld could be brought in for QOS.

Could the VMware Locustworld be the next wind farm for the farmers (PBS special on co-op wind farms and the benefit to the agricultural community?)

Sorry this is where the ideal or dream became a little weird. Hmm, VMware for Locustworld? I think it time for something like this to happen. It could be Wireless Mesh 2.0

Where is my N

2008-01-04T10:26:00.000-05:00

Ok for years now when someone first came out with idea of 802.11N standard I thought this would really help the Wireless Mesh. Just imagine over 300 MBPS meshing together. Oh the thought and reality was awesome. Well I was very close last spring (2007) when I order my 802.11N radio cards. I thought I was on my way the cards have been delayed for over 8 months now. Now a few have made it to market place but the performance has not been that great (so I have been told.) So what is the hold up? Could it be that the performance that we are promised is not being delivered? Naw I think it because of a little company in Canada called Wi-LAN.

This company has been around for a long time and has been creating and buying various patents. “The 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n standards all use Wi-LAN's patented W-OFDM technology and/or Wi-LAN's patented MC-DSSS technology. Even though in 1999, several industry leaders came together to form a global organization, now known as the Wi-Fi Alliance which develops universal specifications and follows through with certification of Wi-Fi wireless devices, based on technical standards developed by the IEEE 802.11 Working Group.” Wi-LAN 2008

Although the WiFi Alliance came up with the standard 802.11n (MIMO overlay on hybrid OFDM/DSSS-based PHY) is owned by Wi-LAN. Now this is really not a big deal for manufacturers all they need to do is license the technology and way they go. But wait Wi-LAN is going after all these companies who produce these products and are using litigation to get compensated. May the delays are not just performance but litigation? Check out there main web page they have item called Litigation. Wow that the first time I seen that.
So wait some more and pay a few more bucks, but the wait will be worth it!

Wireless Mesh 2.0 Goals

2008-01-03T21:59:00.000-05:00

Creating and collecting network data and mining this data could be one of the goals of Wireless Mesh 2.0 is the production of OS and software which can improve itself. Such software can learn from experience and adapt to changing situations and requirements. In addition, such software can refine its knowledge base, perhaps leading to a level of expertise beyond that of human experts. Should wireless mesh become a knowledge-based program that uses a machine learning technique, Knowledge-based Learning, in the domain of Network Traffic Control. Should Wireless Mesh 2.0 tasks be to maximize call completion in an integrated wireless and circuit-switched telecommunications network? Wireless Mesh 2.0 could learn from its own experiences and by observing the actions of other nodes (mesh access points.) Wireless Mesh 2.0 is one of the components of Integrated Learning System, which contains implementations of several learning paradigms working together to improve problem-solving performance. Will Wireless Mesh 2.0 combines two machine learning paradigms: Explanation-Based Learning and Empirical Learning. Naw

Check out more wireless blog

2008-01-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

Tex has been doing amazing things for years and every time I said that I'm working on something Tex has done it. Check out his blog http://wirelessworlds.blogspot.com/

It amazing how many people are working on similar projects.

Oh Tex I thinking of adding AI to the wireless mesh, I think he has already done that too.

Wireless Mesh Networking 2.0

2008-01-02T12:21:00.000-05:00

You knew this was coming, yeah I thought I would write something before the commercial wireless community started to pitch something that actually was nothing. You know what I mean, in open source community you see that many application started to use open source i.e. Video, VoIP, etc. Now you see that there are a lot of machine networks such as sensor networks etc., where wireless mesh is used to gather information in a geographically broad region. Now setting up what wireless Mesh Networking 2.0 should be like mash up and the initial Web 2.0.

The phrase Web 2.0 can refer to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, and wikis, — which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. The term gained currency following the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs. According to Tim O'Reilly, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Web 2.0 not only became a buzz world it also create other 2.0 type such a Government 2.0 and wife 2.0 or husband 2.0 and maybe even children 2.0 a lot of different marketing fluff. Well Wireless Mesh Networking 2.0 should not be fluff but a framework to mash up wireless mesh to benefit Web 2.0 and Government 2.0 i.e. private sector vs. public sector.

So if Wireless Mesh Networking was client based i.e. mesh was used to deliver networking from and to the internet will Mesh 2.0 be server or machine based? Having information being collaborated and shared between Meshian’s? Ok so we’ve done that with wireless Mesh 1.0. Mesh 2.0 has to be bigger than that. Wireless Mesh does not need to be a simple municipal solution or broadband client solution, it needs to grow up first and compete with its wired counter parts i.e. Ethernet, fibre, etc. Wireless Mesh Networking 2.0 needs bandwidth, and once it competes with it wired brother then we can talk about 2.0 or the next generation or social networking or what ever.

No I think Open Source Wireless Mesh should blend in artificial intelligence (AI) components other components that truly make it a living network. Maybe Wireless Mesh 2.0 should be a “Living Network.” You know decision mechanisms that are based on artificial neural network capable of finding patterns, and learning traffic routing on the network. Ok so this ain’t a living breathing item but can you imagine that network giving recommendation of where and how to manipulate it self and position itself to move internet traffic? Naw.

Happy 2008

So this 2008

2008-01-01T12:49:00.000-05:00

Well this is 2008 and we are still meshin'. I came across a post for soekris board installation of Locustworld wireless mesh http://www.markw.net/ I hope this becomes another good resource for your DIY.

Happy New Year!

Moskaluk Telephone to use VoiceMesh

2007-11-16T08:23:00.001-05:00

After a lot of discussions it appears that VoiceMesh is becoming a reality using wireless mesh and asterisk distros. Moskaluk Telephone uses VoiceMesh which is an example of a Disruption Tolerant Applications. The idea here is to build a set of applications that work even when the network is absent, delayed or only sporadically available. However work differs in that the application itself appears continuous. Moskaluk are also investigating disruption tolerance in the guise of "infrastructure-free applications" that do their best to work in diverse connectivity situations.

VoiceMesh is a way to locally connect a set of mesh nodes where at least one of them has access connection to the rest of the world. The idea is that any of the mesh nodes on the network can access the Moskaluk Telephone connections seamlessly.

There are three advantages to this scheme:

1. Anyone can access the connection (VoIP to POTS);
2. You can easily have local and distant conference calls;
3. The actual IAX or SIP softphone is freely available.

Moskaluk operation, we will build this to be agile and resilient so that voice will travel by any and all of the VoIP at the edge, and migrate between them as connections appear and get lost. Further, we will make the system guarantee a connection by multiplexing the voice traffic locally through whatever Uplink connections are in operation. The key to this is to ensure that Concordiax server follows the Locustworld’s wireless mesh topology as per http://www.moskaluk.com/voip_using_wireless_mesh_infrast.htm

A New Wireless Mesh Telephony Solution

2007-11-14T12:17:00.000-05:00

After about a year of working with Trixbox and Locustworld I found that solution for Wide Area Networks needs a bit of twik. Now Trixbox is a good solution and if you are evaluating or about to deploy it you should know a few things, such as:

Trixbox provide multi-media contact centre solutions. They developed PBX and integrate with SugarCRM systems as well as introduce and expand new solutions and processes. Trixbox multi-media voice & data solutions include:
· Automatic Call Distribution (ACD).
· Predictive, Progressive & Preview Dialers.
· Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
· Speech / Voice Recognition.
· Call / Voice Recording & Quality Monitoring.
· Email Management, Web Self-Service & Knowledge-base solutions.
· Web Chat, Web Collaboration & Web Call-Back.
· Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
· Workforce Management / Optimization.

Increasingly, organizations are employing advanced communications mechanisms to streamline the customer interaction process. While this can lead to efficiency improvements, it may not always lead to a better customer service experience - unless it is introduced by the right team of technology specialists. This is where Trixbox, which is dedicated to helping companies improve the way they interact with their customers, marks itself out from many of its competitors.

However, Asterisk developments are not only PBX replacements they can also be VoIP application providers. When marrying up with Wireless Mesh Technology and Asterisk can provide a truly new telephony system. Wireless Mesh has demonstrated that using Trixbox as extension of existing network can work or a wide area network. But there are concerns that configuration and changes of how CRM are deploy and billing systems are added make Trixbox not the right solution for Wide Area Networks or Metropolitan Area Networks. What is need is an Asterisk Solution that focuses on providing Telephony on that scale.

The solution is to bring an Asterisk type solution with elements of Wide area deployment and integration of wireless mesh technologies. Well that why I coming up with a solution that is similar to PBX-in-a-Flash which is based on Concordiax ISO. Now PBX-in-a-Flash is great solution with a focus on DIY and has a similar mandate to Trixbox and beyond; however, with the Concordiax engine it running on the latest installation of Asterisk with out the sugarCRM package. Moskaluk solution will be to use the Asterisk system with scripting of NerdVittles but with an A2Billing component that will integrate with Wireless Mesh.
Hopefully I should have a distro ready for testing in the next few weeks. Stay tuned a Solution for Wireless Mesh Telephony for the provider is about to be come reality.