Yesterday I set up a 5 node mesh network using Open Mesh access points.  These devices are $59 so the price point makes things interesting.

These could be a very easy way to provide open public wifi in one’s office for visitors. A splash page can be displayed with no work, and rate limiting is no work too: you can set bandwidth caps for users on both upload and download data.  This feature alone is great if one has limited up-link just to keep things working.  Imagine having a slow backup internet connection in your office, connecting this to it, and severely limiting bandwidth per user — at least everyone can still use ssh without issue until the fast main connection is back.

Unless one wants to invest a lot of time in installation and management and firmware tracking etc., I don’t think it is ready for mission critical use.  But as an adjunct and easy way to set up a limited public access point seems great.  And the ability to do a true mesh network is interesting of course!