ICYMI, @RamR — goTenna’s Chief Scientist and mesh protocol architect — has published a couple of explainers on mesh networking.
Part 1 was published 3 weeks ago — it covers History & Challenges:
Part 2 was published today — it focuses on Protocols & Performance:
https://inthemesh.com/archive/understanding-mesh-networking-part-ii/
Enjoy, and feel free to ask questions or give feedback!
A big thumb’s up for Ram Ramanathan’s great “pair” of articles! I’m passing familiar with several of the technologies and roughly know some at several stops along the timeline he laid out. However, I learned and understood the big picture much better after spending the brief time it takes to read it closely.
Ramanathan covers the history of mesh in a compact and understandable fashion that makes it accessible for anyone with a curiosity of how mesh works. It’s not as easy as it may seem when it works and understanding the challenges when it sometimes frustrates us is at least reassurance that people do care deeply about making goTenna Mesh a functional and essentially useful device.
I especially recommend it for those thinking about how goTenna can be improved and developed to enhance the user experience. Understanding the complex nature and functioning of mesh networks that is now available distilled into the GTM device gives one a new respect for the effort required to package it into a handy and lightweight unit that is equally useful as an efficient terminal as it as a a node handling network traffic effectively. Sure, there are things that can be improved, as Ramanathan admits when describing the entire field as a great unsolved problem. In describing how goTenna protocols portend even greater advances in an already remarkable communications medium, the author offers hope that even partial solutions promise significant performance improvements in network message handling. While the possibilities of the new 5.0 firmware are just becoming obvious, the full promise of more, better, faster should soon begin to also accrue to the benefit of global consumers.
Good info, pretty much explains the process that some may take as a throttle down, which isn’t and opens the opportunity for intelligent work arounds.
An invitation to ‘GoFigure™️@ITCOB™️’