Measurements in OLPC mesh networks

The ease of deployment and the self configurable aspect of wireless mesh networks has generated lot of interest in them during the recent years. The one laptop per child (OLPC) project uses mesh networking, closely adhering to IEEE 802.11s WLAN mesh standard, to provide networking in a classroom environment. Our work measures and analyzes the performance of OLPC mesh networks. It includes several experiments concerning performance of UDP and TCP across a range of network topologies. Our experiments provide useful information about several aspects of these networks, including connectivity range, effect of RTS/CTS and Tx/Rx capabilities.