I wanted to set up a wireless mesh network here in the dorm so that we wouldn’t have to gather in a room to play lan games. Setting up a wireless network without a router is a pain in itself with Windows, because apparently, and correct me if i’m wrong, you have to enable internet connection sharing (ics) to get an ad-hoc wireless network to work. The reason, i figure, is that there needs to be a host to organize the network. The problem with that is, that if that host computer is not there, the network falls apart. And in a situation when we can’t know who will join the game, that is not acceptable. Also, in the case of Warcraft 3, according to my experience, only the host computer can create game, though i have no idea about the reason for that.

Thus i set out to look for a method to set up a mesh network, but i had to realise it’s hopeless. Finding unstable and buggy mesh organizer software was hard enough in itself, and after that i’d still have to get everyone to install and configure it, a program that might or might not work at all. So, the choices remaining gathering and/or setting up an “ad-hoc” network.

Just in case someone interested, there is a Microsoft wireless mesh project, although it doesn’t work for me throwing errors i can’t do anything about, and also olsr, which seems pretty nice, but i’m still testing, so can’t say anything about it.

Let me know if i’m wrong in any points above.