Information About

Meraki




and networking. Based in Mountain View, California, they have selected San Francisco
meraki.com: Meraki to Build Free Community WiFi Network in San Francisco
to launch their community-based Free the Net
sf.meraki.com: Free the Net
campaign. The company is composed of many of the people who worked on the MIT Roofnet project MIT Roofnet .
The company is producing hardware and software that enables consumers to automatically set up wireless community mesh networks
gigaom.com: Meraki Cooks Up Wireless Mesh Router . Meraki's goal is to "bring internet access to the next billion people."


SOFTWARE


Meraki has taken the Roofnet software and created management software (called "Dashboard") to allow the mesh network to be set up. The software uses the SrcRR
mit.edu: SrcRR: A High Throughput Routing Protocol for 802.11 Mesh Networks (DRAFT). Daniel Aguayo, John Bicket, Robert Morris. routing algorithm to determine the routes between the hardware devices. Media access and transport may be handled by ExOR algorithm
{Link without Title} ExOR: Opportunistic Multi-Hop Routing for Wireless Networks," Sanjit Biswas, Robert Morris, Presented at SIGNCOMM '05, 2005, Copyrigth ACM, Philadelphia, Penn. 2005, ACM No. 1-59593-009-4/05/0008

Each device perodically broadcasts, and all other devices in range will report their routes. Then the devices use that information to route packets to the nearest gateway. The routing is done primarily to determine a route to the nearest gateway (or device with an internet connection).


HARDWARE


Meraki created the Meraki Mini in two versions, an indoor version and an outdoor version. The version for the 2006 beta program had 8 MB of flash and 32 MB of ram
Webarchive backup: December 2006: Meraki Mini Hardware Specifications .
They have an ethernet port and a wireless antenna. If the ethernet port can reach meraki, it will configure itself as a gateway and broadcast this to nearby meraki devices.

Meraki announced a new outdoor product that will ship Dec 2007 with new Industrial Design done by Sparkfactor Design. Meraki Solar . Sparkfactor Design .


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