The Switch to Open

If you know anything about our brief history, you know we’ve been working towards bringing free wi-fi to York City using a technology from Meraki, a mesh network company out of California that developed out of a MIT graduate project.  The hardware Maraki produces and their software back end work very well and we were pleased with the test results from our setup scenario.

So what’s the deal?

From a first glance the Meraki system would work great for what we’re trying to do, with one hitch; the cost of the hardware.  The purchase of Meraki hardware also pays for licensing to use their custom designed management software, but the real fact is that the Meraki hardware is 3-4 times the cost of Open-Mesh hardware. Open-Mesh has developed a back end management software for mesh networks that is just as capable and is completely open source. The best part is that there are several different manufacturers that make O-M compatible hardware.  Now we can select hardware based on the needs of each location, and almost all of them are 50%+ less cost than the comparable Meraki hardware. As we set to build this network, the performance of the network is important, but the cost of hardware is something that we can not ignore. The Meraki hardware cost would be a significant stumbling block for getting businesses and individuals to participate. We have already heard from a number of downtown businesses that the cost of the Meraki hardware would keep them from participating, where as the relatively low cost of the open-mesh hardware would be a much easier pill to swallow.

So why would you care?

Users of the Y-FI network will not notice any difference between the performance of Meraki’s system and the Open-Mesh system.  The advantage is that we will be able to build out the network much faster with less costs. It is our hope that now that our first nodes are installed that we can expand our network quickly and effectively using the Open-Mesh hardware and software.