Network Redesign with Freifunk / 802.11N

[Mike Dawson]

Hi All,

We've successfully tested here in Afghanistan using Freifunk to mesh
routers between classrooms so that we can avoid the need for doing
ethernet cabling in the school.  Now with the 802.11n hardware out
there that supports dual band MIMO 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ I'm hoping that we
can achieve a wireless backbone performance equal or better to cabled.

Some Freifunkers out in Italy managed to get 80Mbps over a 4KM link even:

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:Ul-NcC60_tYJ:global.freifunk.net/%3Fq%3Ditem/open_source_802_11n_big_breakthroughs_are_coming+freifunk+802.11n&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

As far as I can tell 100Mbps (hopefully we can achieve 200-300) should
be a reasonable throughput for the backbone for running the local
library service / jabber / journal backup with about 600 laptops in
the school, any opinions on that?

I was thinking of making a small transparent plastic container for it
so that each one would sit slightly above the roof of each classroom,
then connect to a normal 802.11g router in the classroom.

As per other deployments we cut the signal strength inside the
classroom; the classrooms are running on two non overlapping channels
and the mesh backbone on another.  We should have results by the end
of the month.  Given the cost of sending technicians to do cabling,
feeding them, etc. I'm hoping this works out as about the same cost
but more scalable.

Regards,

-Mike