Coming to a watering hole near you: OLPC's mesh networking

Coming to a watering hole near you: OLPC's mesh networking

Even in today's high-tech world of unified communications and wireless mobility, the idea of two kids with laptops sitting under a tree somewhere in Saharan Africa being able to exchange information without any kind of infrastructure or configuration, seems as wild an idea as the land they live in.

But with the OLPC project, this scenario is rapidly becoming a widespread reality.

"One of our test scenarios is two kids under a tree, in the middle of nowhere, who want to transfer a file between one laptop and another. At the moment with the software that we have, the hardware, and the mesh automation, they can open their laptops, transfer whatever it is they want and then walk off. They don't need any IP address configuration or anything special. It just works," he said.

Mesh networking increases the range of an access point. It is a type of wireless networking that uses redundant and distributed nodes to increase the reliability and range of the network. It is used to route information between OLPC XOs by turning the laptop and the child carrying it into the network infrastructure.