As we have seen from the previous chapters, there are numerous key considerations to bear in mind when planning to implement a mesh. Some of these key considerations, if not properly addressed, constitute potential pitfalls for the mesh system designer. The aim of this short chapter is to bring all such considerations together for easy reference, so the pitfalls may be avoided. This is particularly appropriate as not all pitfalls have familiar equivalents outside the world of mesh networking.

In summary, potential pitfalls already covered in the body of this book centred around

1. capacity,

2. infrastructure,

3. efficiency,

4. relay exhaustion,

5. initial roll-out,

6. upgradeability,

7. reliance of the system on user behaviour, and

8. ad hoc versus quality of service.

There are also two areas which we have covered implicitly, but now wish to highlight explicitly here:

1. 9. security and trust, and

2. 10. system economics.

Let us deal with these areas in turn.

Capacity

In Chapter 4 we noted that it was often rumoured that meshes self-generate capacity, as if this were a truism. The reasoning behind such a claim was usually along the lines of ‘each new user brings additional capacity to the mesh’, or ‘each new user effectively becomes a base station’. This book critically examined such statements and separated the reality from a something-for-nothing type of mythology. We outlined the difference between network capacity and the user throughput which is actually available, concluding that user throughput cannot grow as fast as the mesh grows. The simple reason is the relay requirement imposed on each node, due to the traffic of other nodes.