This chapter focuses on wireless mesh infrastructure systems used for creating large scale Wi-Fi based infrastructure networks, and examines three different approaches currently available for implementing them. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of each approach with particular focus on an analysis of the capacity that is available to users.

Introduction

Mesh is a type of network architecture. Other common network architectures have included Ethernet, originally a shared bus topology for local area networks (LANs) in which every node taps into a common cable that carries all transmissions from all nodes to an egress point. In bus networks, any node on the network senses all transmissions from every other node in the network. Today, most LANs use a star architecture in which every node is connected using a dedicated link to a central switch connected to an egress point (switches can be interconnected to form larger networks).

Mesh networks are different – physical layer connectivity from every node to the egress is not required. As long as a node is connected to at least one other node in the mesh network, it will have full connectivity to the entire network because each mesh node forwards packets to other nodes in the network as required. Mesh protocols automatically determine the best route through the network and can dynamically reconfigure the network if a link becomes unusable.

There are many different types of mesh networks.