Wireless Mesh Network

The IndraNet mesh networks are networks of networks (NoNs).
They inaugurate a new class of communication infrastructure,  '
the Networks of Networks Generation (NoN-G) of
wireless broadband multimedia communications.

The building block of IndraNet NoNs are small, low-cost, customer premises units (CPUs) that called “minders”. These minders are at once communication units, computers, routers, transceivers, and providers of local functionality (e.g. premises security, power metering and management, distributed management of equipment and appliances, and so on). They are interconnected wirelessly by way of their transceiver component. The NoN-G IndraNet networks are transmission agnostic, that is, their architecture and mode of operation is largely indifferent to the mode of transmission used.

The interconnected minders form a multi-layered mesh network called a FraMe (as in Fractal Mesh and pronounced “frame”). Each layer forms a mesh network. The whole FraMe is thus a network of networks. The layers have all the same quasi-random mesh structure (the nodes of each mesh network are distributed where people live and/or work). The density of nodes varies across layers and bandwidth aggregates from one layer to the next, from the layers used by most end users (the minder layers) to the layers used to interconnect and mesh-in with long distance communications optical fibre backbone networks (the hyperminder layers). In other words, the layers of a  FraMe are self-similar, hence their fractal character.

A  FraMe has no built in hierarchy. No one minder controls another and no one layer controls another. All minder devices interact co-operatively.

The operating software, the MinderOS is based on the Internet Protocol and fully interoperative with the Internet. It is distributed across all the minders and all layers. The MinderOS makes the whole NoN-G IndraNet  FraMe self-routing and self-managing without requiring some form of central command, just like the biochemical signalling NoNs that we observed in our potato plant (in technical parlance the network is autopoietic).

The self-similar architecture of the layered mesh enables solving the key problems encountered in other forms of mesh networking. The fractal architecture and the related MinderOS software endow the  FraMe with the properties of a “small world” network

In flat mesh networks comprising only one layer, even when they are of modest size, about 1% of nodes will end up carrying 90% of the traffic resulting in substantial congestion issues. The small world layered feature enables the creation of “instant mobile by-passes” thus avoiding congestion. In flat mesh networks latency issues also arise due to the data packets having to make too many hops from node to node. This creates excessively long gaps or response times between any two points in the network. The small world character enables minimizing the number of hops between two participating users.

Schematic of an IndraNet  FraMe

Many wireless networks are subject to the “cocktail party syndrome”. As the number of guest arriving at a party increases, the noise level increases and each guest ends up having to talk louder and louder to be heard by his or her neighbour. In so doing, each contributes to increasing the overall noise level until virtually no one can hear each other (in technical terms this is known as the difficulty of managing the signal-to-noise ratios). The fractal, layered architecture of the FraMe networks also enables an effective management of signal-to-noise ratios and spatial re-use of the radio spectrum.

The emergent properties of the above features mean that FraMe networks are eminently scalable, both in terms of the numbers of users serviced per square kilometre occupied by a network and in terms of the bandwidth, that is, the communication capacity that can be guaranteed to each end-user. While in hierarchical infrastructures increasing user numbers and the intensity of usage usually reduces the amount of capacity available to each user, in a FraMe increasing the number of users in any given area increases the available aggregate bandwidth and enables guaranteeing to each user a given amount of bandwidth at all point in time regardless of the number of co-users and regardless of the load they may place on the network.

A FraMe is a, secure, multipurpose communication infrastructure. It can be partitioned into any number of secure and independent virtual private networks, the IndraNet Intelligent Private Networks or iPNs. These iPNs can be used for a wide variety of purposes such as health, education, e-commerce, power grid management, premise security, water and irrigation management networks and so on. In other words one physical advanced communication infrastructure provides any number of virtual ones, thus offering very high economies of scale and potentially substituting for numerous often inefficient and costly separate legacy infrastructures and intermediaries.

Reproduced with kind permission of Dr Louis Arnoux from his e-book "Peak Oil, Climate Change & All That Jazz"