MANET is one of the protocols I was involved in implementing for a certain network protocol suite back around 2012. Mesh routing protocols only work for the most limited of use cases. They don't know about the capacity of the underlying wireless network and basically fall apart when things are congested or there are radios with poor reception. QoS is implemented far better in modern cell phone networks, and if the routing protocol doesn't take QoS into account, it's gonna suck.
Interesting! If someone with a math background (but not a CS background) wanted to dig deep into learning about mesh networking protocol theory - do you have any recommendations for learning resources or places to get started?
I've long imagined that a content centric mesh network approach would be a better starting point than what we've built up currently, but it seems like such a deep and mysterious subject and I have no idea where to even begin to get started.
I never followed where things went after the contract was complete. Suffice it to say that we only cared about getting the protocol working, as the company was a contract engineering firm doing work for a product that was ultimately for military use. Actually testing it in the real world and improving behaviour was out of scope. We only tested it in a simulated network to make sure that the protocol correctly handled various cases (like certain wireless nodes not being able to see each other due to obstructions).
I had other friends back in the early 2000s working on WiMax, and the hardest part of their work was getting QoS right. More recently (still 10+ years ago), another friend implemented a TCP proxy for a major cell phone provider in the US that used a more wireless friendly congestion control protocol on the wireless network side of things as regular TCP breaks down when latency increases due to reception issues (which gets interpreted as congestion and triggers retransmits). Since the cellular base stations ensured that the wireless network was effectively lossless (albeit with periods of much higher latency), performance for end users increased substantially when the bulk of the TCP retransmits were suppressed.
There's a huge gap between making wireless work vs making it work well. For me, 5G is a step backwards as all the tricks used to push for higher data rates (like larger QAM constellations) make everything worse in rural areas with poor reception: there just isn't a good enough SNR 99% of the time for the new shiny, and the increased power usage does nothing other than drain my phone's battery faster than it did with older LTE. But that is where all the money for research is today.
It highly depends on where you plan to run your mesh on. Meshes that one run on wired networks (be it copper or fiber) are vastly different from meshes that work on radio waves. Even more different when it comes to this radio spectrum.
If you're talking about fast and low latency connection then look into existing meshes, almost every popular mesh has some sort of paper describing how it works.
Ever since 802.11ah devices started appearing I've thought it would be perfect for partnering inside wireless IP cameras... and hell, make them mesh together with something like this so each one configured on your network extends the range of the others in it's area. Streaming 720P H265 is easily doable at the speeds the networks achieve for a few cameras, and the range would be perfect for perimeter monitoring most properties ala farms & industrial parks.
This device however - an entire Raspberry Pi + hat for a router to do..? ... seems like a solution in search of a problem to solve.
A medium range trail/offgrid camera is perfect for this application. All the other solutions in the space are sdcard only, or dependent on some variant of LTE/5G.
I played with HaLow for a while but the only stuff I could get here in the UK was some undocumented crap from AliExpress, anything more robust looking only seems to work in the US. A shame because it’d solve a infrastructure challenge I have to juggle each year
It's worth commenting to me that MeshCore performs much better than Meshtastic at scale and as an emplaced deployment. We have a very active network of about 60 nodes in the Boston area which feels similar to iMessage in deliverability and speed.
But yes, it can't realistically be compared to something like a "real" MANET system with $10k radios that can do something like 100mbps data rates. It is dramatically more accessible and deployable though.
LoRa has tiny bandwidth. Enough for text messaging if not too many people use it.
HaLow has lots more bandwidth, 433Mbps max, which allows for proper networking. It can bridge to other networks. But the practical range is only 1km. Also, the radios are expensive while LoRa is cheap.
I feel like a HAM license is something of an inevitability of my future, although I don’t have any practical need for one. Catching satellite signals in my backyard is a lot of fun.
If anyone wants to help make MANETs better with TAK… check out opportunities on ditto.com where the team is building crdts and using them to help enable SAR. Say Turner sent you in your application if it looks interesting. Particularly the FDE role.
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I've long imagined that a content centric mesh network approach would be a better starting point than what we've built up currently, but it seems like such a deep and mysterious subject and I have no idea where to even begin to get started.
I had other friends back in the early 2000s working on WiMax, and the hardest part of their work was getting QoS right. More recently (still 10+ years ago), another friend implemented a TCP proxy for a major cell phone provider in the US that used a more wireless friendly congestion control protocol on the wireless network side of things as regular TCP breaks down when latency increases due to reception issues (which gets interpreted as congestion and triggers retransmits). Since the cellular base stations ensured that the wireless network was effectively lossless (albeit with periods of much higher latency), performance for end users increased substantially when the bulk of the TCP retransmits were suppressed.
There's a huge gap between making wireless work vs making it work well. For me, 5G is a step backwards as all the tricks used to push for higher data rates (like larger QAM constellations) make everything worse in rural areas with poor reception: there just isn't a good enough SNR 99% of the time for the new shiny, and the increased power usage does nothing other than drain my phone's battery faster than it did with older LTE. But that is where all the money for research is today.
Wireless is complicated.
If you're talking about fast and low latency connection then look into existing meshes, almost every popular mesh has some sort of paper describing how it works.
This device however - an entire Raspberry Pi + hat for a router to do..? ... seems like a solution in search of a problem to solve.
I understand some hams run a meshtastic repeater primarily to convince meshtastic users to become hams.
But yes, it can't realistically be compared to something like a "real" MANET system with $10k radios that can do something like 100mbps data rates. It is dramatically more accessible and deployable though.
HaLow has lots more bandwidth, 433Mbps max, which allows for proper networking. It can bridge to other networks. But the practical range is only 1km. Also, the radios are expensive while LoRa is cheap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Team_Awareness_Kit
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