Hi. I have a business application for a closed peer-to-peer network and I was hoping that the folk here could make some recommendations.
I operate a small vending route, and I'd like for my vending machines to be networked. I can source PC104 boards capable of running Linux for under $50 each, and hard drives on the open market. I can afford internet service (or share it with a store proprietor) for just a few machines; and I'm wondering what kind of hardware and software I'd need to deploy to make each installed machine on the network extend that network to make it available for further machines. It needs to scale to the size of vending machine installations in a large strip mall; hundreds of machines spread over an area 50 or 60 times the radius of a typical wifi network. It needs to be fault-tolerant (route intelligently or just store packets for later transmission when someone turns on a vacuum cleaner and the ten nearest wifi links become unusable) and handle fairly large bandwidth (surveillence camera footage) on-demand. The devices on the network should be individually addressable by each other; a vending machine that gets a bump/tilt input (and may be under attack by vandals or thieves) or a failed-sale detection (machine failed to distribute merchandise) should be able to notify a security-camera unit to look at it and record what's going on in real-time, whether or not either can access the larger internet at that moment. It should be "reasonably" secure that random members of the public don't get access to it, but should allow restricted access by people with keys (police, store owners and mall security for example will want access to the recorded data and video footage). The Internet gateways should have a different key (ie, even the cops don't get to surf through my network to locations outside of it), but the machines should be able to upload their data to my central server through the internet so I know which ones need restocked or repaired, etc, before I set out in the morning. I'm willing to spend a couple hundred dollars and do a bit of electronic assembly for each machine, and I have off-the-shelf hardware and software that collects and, for now, just stores most of the data I'm interested in networking -- bump/tilt sensors, security cameras, sale/inventory reports, etc. I'm a reasonably competent linux sysadmin with skills from a computer-programming career that I'm leaving behind, but never dealt with mesh networking professionally. What hardware, software, or protocols would you recommend for this application? Bear _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers