Meraki's Solar WiFi Repeater

rektide [ 5 June 2007 04:15 PM]

looks promising, at a promising price point.

the diy wifi router community has been doing well, but its hard finding reasonable priced solutions that can sport the two wifi cards required for repeating. the new routerboards allow people to put together repeaters on the cheap, which is good. magicbox is another great low cost solution. unfortunately i dont believe either of these have usb host, which just about every other board on the planet has. a common alternative is installing two units, which makes sense when units cost $50 a piece. in a much larger sense, the ability to throw together new hardware boards has gotten much easier with each new progression in integrated system on chip as each chipset handles more and more onboard and requires less and less passive componentry: the results have been self evident in pricing and time to market.

the technical capabilities to setup your own repeating network are very stringent: too illiberal a forwarding mechanism and packets will get bounced around ad nauseum. having a scalable stable standard practice & procedure for creating directed or mesh networks would be a boon to enthusiasts, but everyones solutions end up being highly tailored to their own use and divergent from being able to serve as a standard practice.

the one thing i'd like to see is more outdoor casing available with integrated sector antennas. in terms of metropolitan class network deployment, i think the availability of reasonably priced case/antenna combos would be a huge boon. i dont see why this should cost more than $25.

i idle in #openwrt on freenode: good wifi talk all night long. all are invited. =]

Anonymous [12 June 2007 07:52 AM]

The real problem is the root providers who have nasty policies about how you can use your access. Cable and DSL companies all bet on people not actually using what they pay for.

Martin Olsson [13 June 2007 01:50 AM]

This looks really cool, but it is still too expensive. How do we make solar powered wifi-devices really really cheap? Like $1 or $10?

Mike Rosenberg [26 June 2007 04:07 AM]

One point that seems to get lost in discussions of Meraki is that in addition to forming a mesh network, the range of the individual routers is startling. I was skeptical of the website's claims and so tested them using a MacBook (i.e. decent Wi-Fi device). Line-of-Sight range was 220m, and with one inside my friend's flat in Cambridge, MA (brick walls, a few windows), we still managed range of 72m - a tad better than your average WRT!

And I actually think there's an enormous market for a solar-powered version at this price point. We started selling the mini units ($49) in Mozambique, where we found people already bought D-Link wireless routers for more (no mail-in rebates there!). People in Mozambique don't buy wireless routers so they can surf the web on their couch or in their bedroom - they buy them so they can charge their neighbors to use their broadband connection.

Broadband there is expensive and unreliable, if you are lucky enough to live in Maputo or Beira. Businesses opt for V-SAT ($3000/month for 1.5Mbps). But with just a few of these you can blanket a neighborhood and internet becomes affordable. Add solar power and external antennas and neighboring villages have a hotspot (easily monetized with Meraki's dashboard software).

Fabuka [ 7 August 2007 10:59 AM]

I keep seeing information about the possibility of obtaining 6-18 miles range with the meraki minis when used with an antenna.
Can someone please tell me which antenna and equipment could be used to attianed this distance?

Karl Wagner [12 September 2007 08:41 PM]

@ Fabuka [08.07.07 10:59 AM]
"Can someone please tell me which antenna and equipment could be used to attianed this distance?"

Use this, on both ends: http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2424g.php

wifi repeater [29 December 2009 12:53 AM]

I had ever made a diy solar
wifi repeater http://www.wifirepeater.org/solar-energy-wifi-repeater-test/