Community mesh
Introduction
A wireless mesh network is a mesh network, or mesh in English, implemented over a wireless network.
Basics
Mesh wireless networks, coupled networks, or infrastructure wireless mesh networks, to define them in a simple way, are those networks in which the two topologies of wireless networks are mixed, the Ad-hoc topology and the infrastructure topology. Basically they are networks with infrastructure topology but that allow devices to join the network that, despite being outside the coverage range of the access points, are within the coverage range of some network card (TR) that is directly or indirectly within the coverage range of an access point (AP).
They allow network cards to communicate with each other, regardless of the access point. This means that devices that act as network cards may not directly send their packets to the access point but may pass them to other network cards so that they reach their destination.
For this to be possible, it is necessary to have a routing protocol that allows the information to be transmitted to its destination with the minimum number of hops or with a number that, although not the minimum, is good enough. It is resistant to failures, since the failure of a single node does not imply the failure of the entire network.
Mesh technology always depends on other complementary technologies for the establishment of a return network because the hops between nodes cause delays that are added one after another, so that delay-sensitive services, such as IP telephony, are not viable.
The use of Wimax 5.4 GHz can be an acceptable backhaul solution to strengthen the reach of the mesh network, but in many cases it means giving up the 5.4 GHz band to give access to users.
Using licensed technologies (for example 802.16, in the 3.5 GHz band), to create backhaul, it is possible to offer access to users in 2.4 GHz and 5.4 GHz. This allows users to have 80% more free channels, increasing the number of concurrent users by 60-80%.
As an example we can see the structure of a wireless mesh network made up of eight nodes. It can be seen that each node establishes communication with all other nodes.