Tag Archives: Mesh

News

MNN Hosting OLPC Grassroots Jam

Forest Mars, from Manhattan Neighborhood Network, is hosting a OLPC Grassroots Jam on June 14 & 15. The Jam will be at MNN Headquarters (537 West 59th Street). Come and help build an innovative new service for OLPC users. I’m sure there will be lots of interesting OLPC hardware to play with as well!

Now Recruiting for a Pilot In A Box kit team for the OLPC Grassroots Jam

One Laptop per Child will be holding a Grassroots Jam at the Manthattan Neighborhood Network studio from Saturday June 14 through Sunday June 15. In two days, we’ll be building a Pilot In A Box kit (focused on integrating XO use into specific curricular modules) and testing it with local children in preparation for deploying the Kit at an actual school pilot within 4 months – stay tuned for more on the specific deployment conditions we’ll be designing for. All materials will be provided.

We’re looking for a 50-person team of educators, content-creators, artists, writers, programmers, engineers, and others who can contribute to a Pilot In A Box kit. In addition to coming up for ways for teachers to use the things inside The Box, we’ll need to figure out (and make) what’s in The Box, how schools will repair equipment from The Box, how The Box is transported and stored, how its content can be localized, how The Box can be used for communication over a diverse set of networks, and more. We are also looking for young testers (ages 7-14, with their parents) to come in and try out the finished products on Sunday afternoon, June 15, from 3-6pm.

Registration is free but space is limited, so we have a rolling admissions process. To view more information, including how you or your group can participate, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_Jam. We hope to see you there!

About OLPC

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The rugged, Linux-based, mesh-networking-enabled, and power-efficient laptops have begun to be deployed to children by schools across the world on the basis of one laptop per child. OLPC is based on constructionist theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital.

News

IS4CWN 2008 Followup

Laura Forlano, Joe Plotkin, and I went to the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks in Washington, D.C. last week, and (as usual) it was a great experience. We saw FCC Commissioner Adelstein speak, and had lots of great conversations (many over beer) with a number of other CWN folks that came to the conference.

Of particular note was the significant forward progress that is being made to create a simple, unified mesh router (built on OpenWRT, OLSR, and Wifidog). We’ve got a bunch of test units and will be trying it out soon.

Steven Mansour has posted a great slideshow of the conference, and there are plenty of Flickr photos and Twitter posts.

From the Executive Director

Why Mesh-based Wireless Networks Are Ideal for New York

Mesh networks are wireless networks, based on Wi-Fi technology, where each wireless “node” or “access point” connects with a number of other wireless nodes. Information flows from node to node, winding up either at its destination or the internet in general. Internet connections, in a mesh-based network, are provided by one or more nodes that connect to the internet directly (referred to as “backhaul”).

Robust and reliable, mesh wireless systems offer multiple points of connection to the network and no central tower. Mesh users can bypass obstacles like hills and trees by using different signal paths. Mesh networks are easily expandable at very low cost, and they have no single point of failure. Mesh networks also feature shorter distances between nodes, which means each antenna can broadcast at lower power, creating less interference and allowing more users to communicate simultaneously.” (from http://www.freepress.net/wifi/guide2.php)

The benefits of mesh technology are many:

  • self-organized, dynamic routing and connection
  • little or no centralized configuration
  • each node is interchangeable with every other node
  • overlapping wireless coverage areas ensure that no node is a point of failure
  • no wires are necessary, as the network is entirely wireless
  • organic build-out of the entire network is possible
  • multiple separate networks can be built independently and grow into a single cohesive network
  • redundant paths to backhaul
  • easy/seamless addition of additional backhaul

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