VIBE: Meshing Inexpensive Routers

Abstract

Mesh networking has proven to be a highly resilient network topology for applications operating in environments affected by natural disasters, network disruption, or political activism. Unfortunately, traditional mesh networking infrastructure is often expensive, hard to acquire, or restricted by governmental authorities. These restrictions have created artificial barriers which affect the widespread adoption of this technology. In this paper, we discuss modifications of existing low-cost 802.11 wireless networking hardware to facilitate the creation of ad-hoc mesh networks without specialized hardware or training. We also discuss utilizing amateur Ham radio frequencies to improve the resiliency and capability of the network. We then present VIBE, an implementation of a mesh network on such low-cost hardware.