[hackerspaces] Networking on the East Coast

[Jonathan Lassoff]

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Willow Brugh <willow.bl00 at gmail.com> wrote:
> So things are pretty messed up in Far Rockaways and Staten Island. Likely
> some other places as well, but that's all I can speak to right now. What
> would really benefit everyone are mesh networks on old laptops - then
> communities have an easier time of coordinating themselves, and at least
> nominal information can be uploaded via vsat.
>
> is this something that folk are into helping with?

I'm marginally interested.
However, I would caution that "mesh" is not easy to do well with
ad-hoc administration. I've seen it work well in either very small
environments, or those that have one administrative group for
everything.

A Ubiquiti PTMP AP in a high location with downstream Ubiquiti clients
speaking Airmax will work quite well, IMO. They've solved the hidden
node problem inherent in multi-point, long distance WiFi shots.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of experimentation with 802.11s and
open80211s on Ubiquiti hardware and Linux laptops.

There is good support in Linux for wifi adapters that are based on the
mac80211 (software MAC) stack.

I'd be happy to share what I know about it.

Cheers,
jof