Imagine if your wifi router didn't just talk to your laptop and smartphone, but also talked to your neighbours wifi routers, and those routers in turn talked to their neighbours wifi routers. This is exactly what a mesh network is. Anyone who has a mesh-enabled wifi router can talk for free to everyone else on the mesh. It becomes a free communications network owned and operated by everyone. These networks can be connected to the normal Internet and provide a way for people to share a portion of their internet bandwidth, covering cities with free wifi Internet. Networks with thousands of nodes already exist in places like Berlin and Athens.
Local mesh projects
- People's Open Network: A mesh being built by local volunteer group sudo mesh based out of sudo room, a hackerspace located in downtown.
Other examples
- Mesh network examples (Wikipedia)
