Amazed By The Wifi Mesh of MIT’s One Laptop Per Child Project

Last week I had the enormous pleasure to have been invited to MIT’s Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts to take a look at their activities and in particular the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Walter Bender gave an intro and a hands on demo of the laptop and as you can see on the picture on the left he had all the eyes and ears of the audience.

It’s difficult if not impossible not be amazed by any part of the project and the green/white prototypes of the laptop and its software. As somebody who looses a word or two every now and then about communication and networks, I was especially interested in the Wifi Mesh network implementation and what kids can do with it. Communicating with each other, playing, painting pictures etc. etc. and of course get access to the Internet if a gateway is in reach of just one of the laptops forming a mesh network. Individual laptops act as a mesh node even when they are switched off. Great stuff! Details about the OLPC project in general and about the mesh implementation (complying to the current draft of 802.11s as much as possible) specifically can be found here.