Online connectivity has become of supreme importance. Without it, most of our activities would come to a halt. To ensure that our lives never slow down, we need a stable and fast internet connection. But that is only possible if you have wired fiber broadband connection. Broadband internet has a flaw though. You can’t really take it with you outside your home or office. On the outside, you have to rely on your mobile network provider for the internet which is most of the time quite slow due to either data congestion or network throttling by the service provider. But the future of broadband internet can be wireless mesh networks. They don’t require a wired connection and can be set-up in any part of the city without any huge cost.
Wireless Mesh Network is Truly Wireless
When we say wireless broadband connection or internet, it is not truly wireless. It is connected to a fixed-line network and with the help of a router, it distributes signals nearby. That is why you cannot carry it with you anywhere. But the mesh networks are truly wireless because they do not require to be wired throughout for providing data.
Wireless mesh networks rely on nodes which communicate with each other wirelessly and therefore are able to transmit data through each other. The good thing about these nodes is that they are comparatively cheaper to set-up than network towers. Adding to that, one network could be connected to hundreds of nodes.
The wireless mesh nodes are basically radio transmitters sending internet signals through each other. They use the common Wi-Fi standards - 802.11a, g, and b. An interesting thing to know about these mesh nodes is that they are very smart in communicating. So in case, there is a network failure or any problem in any of the nodes, the remaining nodes will figure it out and will start communicating with the node which has the best network signal nearby them.
But the origin of the network is through one router which is connected to a fixed-line. The primary router then starts sending the signal to the nodes nearby and then those nodes communicate the signals even further. This kind of network can be good for a whole city as well as a small office. It all depends on the number of nodes that are being set-up and the kind of internet speed that is being provided to the primary router.
Since there is lesser wire in setting up this connection, it means that the overall cost for setting up the internet connection would be lesser as well. The nodes are self-configuring, there is no network administrator required. Another great thing about the wireless mesh nodes is that they are very easy to install and very easy to uninstall. It could be done with a minimal man force and thus would even save more costs.
