Most wireless network installations today involve a set of access points with overlapping coverage zones, each access point being connected to a wired network tap. Mesh networks remove this strong connectivity requirement by having only a few of the access points connected to a wired network, and allowing the others to forward packets over multiple wireless hops. This talk is in the area of wireless mesh networking.
Effort has already been made to make wireless mesh networks a reality. However, the systems that we usually see in academic world and industry are either experimental testbeds (tailored to evaluate special kind of protocols), they use expensive hardware for mesh nodes, or have limited (or none) support for mobility. In this talk we present the architecture of the first high-throughput 802.11 wireless mesh network that provides a fast handoff using off-the-shelf low cost routers. This talk also introduces the architecture and protocols of the first robust Push-To-Talk service for wireless mesh networks. This is a joint work with Yair Amir, Claudiu Danilov, Mike Hilsdale, Michael Kaplan and Nilo Rivera.