[CWN-Summit] Seeking advice on low-cost mesh node wifi in St. Louis, Missouri, USA

[Stephen Ronan]

Could you write the proposal so as to give yourself some latitude in 
regard to what equipment you'd use? Meraki is a mature product that 
works extremely well now.

Open-mesh/Robin has enormous potential, but still has a ways to go. It's 
hard to know whether it'll be one month, or six, or more before it'll be 
good enough for your needs.

Ideally, you'd be able to make the decision on what to use shortly 
before you deploy.

In regard to open mesh/Robin, some folks have been combining use of 
Acctons purchased at open-mesh.com with Deliberant devices: 
http://www.deliberant.com/estore/web/c-35-2.4-ghz-cpes.aspx that have 
been flashed with Robin. As you may know, Robin can work with either 
OLSR or BATMAN, though only an older Jan 2008 version of BATMAN has been 
incorporated thus far. A newer version may be used soon.

I've used the Merakis at a few different sites, with up to about 60 per 
mesh network. They've worked brilliantly well. I've only got a couple of 
the open-mesh Accton devices so far for trial purposes, but think they 
have a bright future..

   - Stephen Ronan

Ben West wrote:
> [...]
>
> So, assuming you have a $10-$15k start-up budget (including equipment
> purchase. deployment, AND marketing) for installing wifi along a
> ~2mile corridor with lots of 3story rooftops, what suggestions are out
> there?
>
> Meraki, and take your lumps?
>
> Open-mesh.com, which is appealing since OpenWRT can be deployed to
> legacy devices like residents' existing Linksys routers?
>   
[...]