Mountains of Mesh Help One Ski Town

MeshDynamics announced its first commercial deployment, a 13-node network for Enchanted Circle Communications in tiny Red River, New Mexico, a ski resort. Enchanted Circle installed the network a year ago. Enchanted Circle co-owner Keith Hall tried out two other mesh network systems first, from Cisco Systems and AirMatrix. Neither worked as advertised. MeshDynamics vice president of sales and marketing Byron Henderson says his company’s technology, on which it has eight patents pending, is the first self-configuring, third-generation Wi-Fi mesh networking system on the market.

Does Zigbee Trump WiFi mesh?

According to market research company, In-Stat, the ZigBee standard will become the dominant wireless mesh networking technology because of "the clarity of the ZigBee standard, the organisational strength of the ZigBee Alliance and the involvement of several of the world's largest semiconductor companies." In-Stat doesn't explain how it reaches its conclusion in light of ZigBee's much more limited bandwidth than WiFi: a maximum off 250bkps, according to the ZigBee Alliance, as against 10Mbps and above for WiFi.

WiFi Outlook Cloudy in Mountain View

Users of the Google-supported municipal WiFi network in Mountain View, Calif., have chimed in on the service they're getting -- and the picture is about as rosy as a military update from Baghdad.

Mesh Shakeout Looms

Mesh WiFi vendors agree that a period of market consolidation is inevitable; the only question is when.

Bellevue: Do It Yourself and Lease Back

The City of Bellevue plans to deliver their own municipal services then wholesale excess capacity. Bellevue will use Cisco 1500 meshed access points (right) along with the Cisco 4400 controller. After the 6-month trial, the city can either buy the equipment for approximately $100,000 or lease it for $25,000 - $35,000 per year (over a period of three to five years).

FCC Endorses Broadband over Powerline

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday gave a big boost to Broadband over Powerline (BPL), classifying the technology as an "information service."