Motherboard's documentary on Occupy Wall Street, hacktivism, and the
hackers trying to build a distributed network for the Occupy movement
and beyond.
Mesh networking (topology) is a type of networking where each
node must not only capture and disseminate its own data, but also serve as a
relay for other nodes, that is, it must collaborate to propagate the data in the network.
A mesh network can be designed using a
flooding technique or a
routing technique. When using a routing technique, the message propagates along a path, by
hopping
from node to node until the destination is reached. To ensure all its
paths' availability, a routing network must allow for continuous
connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths, using
self-healing algorithms. A mesh network whose nodes are all connected to each other is a
fully connected network. Mesh networks can be seen as one type of ad hoc network.
Mobile ad hoc networks
(MANET) and mesh networks are therefore closely related, but MANET also
have to deal with the problems introduced by the mobility of the nodes.
The self-healing capability enables a routing based network to
operate when one node breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result,
the network is typically quite reliable, as there is often more than
one path between a source and a destination in the network. Although
mostly used in wireless scenarios, this concept is also applicable to
wired networks and software interaction.
See Microsft research on
Self Organizing Wireless Mesh Networking.
Build your own Freedom Tower with these plans.
Free Network Foundation
