fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog » 2007

FON Meraki mesh-up coming? March 22, 2007

In his blog, Martin Varsavski recently mentioned Meraki and the possibilities of FON to add on more mesh technology. I raised the question last year already why FON has not built in meshing features before. Martin states that he thinks ISPs would be in favour of FON's "one to one" concept (you subscribe to internet at home and can use it on the road) vs. a mesh network where it would be more likely that ones internet is shared with more non-paying users. While I think this could be true (ISPs may think that) it doesn't make very much sense because with meshing you would just reach more Foneros but to surf for free you would still need to be a Fonero (either Linus or Bill in which case it's not free then). So meshing doesn't open a WiFi network to more "free" users (free as in beer) but just to more paying or sharing members. I don't see a problem in that. Once an ISP has bought FON's concept, meshing just makes more sense because it spreads it faster, right? Anyways, it seems that FON is going to implement meshing features in upcoming routers or even firmware updates (see comments in Martin's post).