Some community wireless / WDS feasibility questions

[Stephen Ronan]

[...]

>Meraki is based on Roofnet (SRCRR), but I'm not 100% that they 
>inter-operate (I'm pretty sure it does).   If it does, it will run on PC 
>and Metrix Hardware.  Not on WRT.   Beware, it's full of NAT. 
>  
>

I wish we could get a current version of Roofnet to work on Metrix 
hardware. Unfortunately none of the images released in the past year 
seem to. Whey trying to install them on a Metrix kit there is a kernel 
panic and I was told that the software would need to be recompiled in 
order for it to work successfully on the Soekris chipset.

In regard to Roofnet/Meraki inter-operability there's enough divergence 
that one would be advised not to depend on any limited remaining 
interoperability continuing with future Meraki releases.

With Boston-area colleagues, I've been using Roofnet on Netgear WGT634U 
devices bought refurbished for $50 or less, e.g, we have over 100 of 
them meshed at one 500-unit housing development plus a couple of WRAP 
boards. We had hope to mainly use Metrix devices for outdoor nodes but 
ran into the problem cited above as of a year ago.

In regard to Roofnet, it's certainly true that "it's full of NAT", which 
has substantial advantages, as well as disadvantages in our experience. 
But Meraki has evolved considerably and one needn't expect it to be the 
same in that respect.

Netequality has recently opened its online store to sell Merakis via 
http://www.netequality.org and has extremely useful mapping/management 
tools. See the documentation link.

We're buying Merakis for several housing sites in Boston and that's what 
I'd recommend these days though I hope that fully free and open source 
versions of Roofnet continue to be advanced.

Steve Stroh's comments on Meraki:
http://www.bwianews.com/2007/03/meraki_another_.html

 - Stephen Ronan