I wish “mesh” WiFi was more standardized. I don’t think there’s any good reason that a device like this should require specifically a Starlink mesh mode instead of an industry standard WDS device.
https://www.netgear.com/au/home/wifi/mesh/mk62/
I was most pissed off when I bought another (orbi?) kit from the same vendor a couple of years later and it didn't support easymesh, and wasn't compatible at all. Does seem to be a mess!
To be fair, the security model for mesh is hard. Even FirefoxOS couldn't get mesh working properly. I think someone needs to just bring out an open device with mesh as the default use case. If anyone wants to pile on and do it, I'm down to contribute.
[0] https://gwern.net/complement [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11s
You set up a mesh network to provide community internet access to an underserved community? 99.9% of traffic will be going to or from the node that connects to the internet at large.
That means that although notionally adding a node to the network adds more bandwidth to the network, in practice that's only true if the new node happens to add extra bandwidth at a bottleneck.
And if everyone aims their directional antennas at the egress node, to avoid this? You've just reinvented the centralised network.
And at least with earlier meshes, you decrease bandwidth even if you use only one device, because now in laptop<--wifi-->AP<--mesh-->router both links compete for the same airtime.
Well, if you had an hourglass-shaped mesh network which was congested at the narrow point of the hourglass, and you recruited an extra node that gave you a second link across the narrow point, by adding the node you've doubled the bandwidth between the bulbs of the hourglass - and improved the redundancy.
The problem is a lot of people imagine this will happen every time they add a node, making the whole thing infinitely scalable. Whereas the reality is any time you add a node that isn't crossing the narrow point of the hourglass, the congestion gets worse.
The reality is that practically everyone is using "wifi mesh technology" as range extender for their own singular internet connection, and the internet connection is the bottleneck for practically everything.
Imagine a plug and play system where people with a satellite link could sell network access to their neighbors without a headache. Clients would just need to specify how much they are willing to pay for GB and nodes how much they want to get paid in their routers.
There are many great things that could be done but AFAIK nobody is investing in making that a reality because governments and those that benefiting from the established status quo would definitely get in the way. So Starlink is the way as there's not much that governments can do to get in the way of thousands of satellites controlled by company outside their territory.
Keep the bandwidth heavy applications on different channels with a different QoS guarantees and cost structure.
And even for longer range, that reasoning can't explain the absence of anything at all from Google or Apple in off-the-grid situations. Why can't I text (iMessage, WhatsApp etc.) a friend sitting a couple of rows away in an airplane without Wi-Fi, when I can airdrop them gigabytes of data just fine?
[1] DECT NR+: A technical dive into non-cellular 5G: