Meshed Networking

Today we did some wireless testing for our digital village concept which we plan to role out in the easten cape. The concept is quite simple, it is to connect small rural villages with no access to affordable communication, access to educational progammes, an offline Wikipedia database which can be accessed by all and free local communication between villiages.

Practically speaking our tests were to check the nuts and bolts of the installation and check that everything was working correctly before roling out into the field. Joining us were Daniel who works for exec a branch of goverment which deals with rural improvement and Targus a friend of Daniels who is a expert on wireless. Together we successfully connected the mesh potatos (a rugged outdoor AP and ATA) with some directional Mikro Tik point to point devices. We successfully made a phone call from a neibouring farm 3.2 km away with good signal and excellent sound quality. Tomorrow we will begin with the server training of our local staff who will be the ones administering our networks.