[Freedombox-discuss] Libre Planet Followup

[James Vasile]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 06:56:39 +1030, Paul Gardner-Stephen <paul at servalproject.org> wrote:
> Hi James,
> 
> > Can you tell me the largest mesh actually created with these mature
> > bits?  I'm told there are scaling problems because the routing
> > difficulty grows faster than the nodes (e.g. it's not O(n) but more like
> > O(n^2).
> 
> I am aware of ~1000 nodes, which is actually more than you need if you
> combine mesh as the "last mile" with what infrastructure happens to be
> available to gate traffic onto an internet (not necessarily the
> internet) to get it from place to place on the mesh.
> The mesh itself can be continuous and much larger, provided that each
> node only cares about a limited number of the most local nodes.
> This limits the routing complexity to be more or less constant for the
> local mesh, and O(n) at worst for the wormholes between regions on the
> mesh.
> 
> This is exactly what ServalProject.org is implementing.
> 
> In short, I agree with Charles, that while not yet at their zenith,
> mesh networks are sufficiently mature to factor in and to use.

That is quite helpful.  Thank you.

What if there is no gate infrastructure between mesh areas?  What are
the limits, both theoretically and empirically?