MeshDynamics, a maker of wireless mesh networking technology, today announced three new software packages that turn off-the-shelf communications hardware into 802.11 WiFi edge nodes.
The Edge Node software packages extend the company’s MD4000 wireless backhaul nodes, which support up to four radios in a single enclosure and operate on non-interfering channels in the same frequency band, to a new line of complementary products. The software can be used with Ubiquiti Networks, Inc.’s off-the-shelf Bullet, a $39 carrier-class, weatherproof radio system that works in mobile environments, and Ubiquiti’s $79 NanoStation hardware, which integrates an antenna and advanced routing features and is designed to be installed in a fixed location. The new offerings are the Standard Edge Node, the Mobile Edge Node, and the Hybrid Edge Node.
The software, which provides routing and network management, can be used for security applications, such as video surveillance, or to maintain voice-over-IP communications at the edges of the network or in hard-to-reach places, such as coal mines. Or, in the case of the Hybrid Edge Node, firefighters entering a burning building could have Ubiquiti Bullets in their pockets to create their own extensible moving network, according Byron Henderson, MeshDynamics’ vice president of marketing.
“This just builds on the idea of a [wireless] hot spot, but extends it over large distances,” said Henderson in an interview with Managing Automation. The MD4000, for example, has been on armored vehicles in Iraq. “But the challenge is if something needs to be carried by a person, [in which case] our products are too big and have too much power. The Ubiquiti hardware lets us put this on a person … [so that] they become part of the network.”