LOL. Like The Kenyan gives half a crap about what a bunch of capitalist crackers say.
Anyway, I started investigating this very issue a couple of months ago. I want to create a mesh Internet tied together with HAM between access points. A fellow FReeper gave me the following direction:
Check out “Freifunk” and OLSR as starting points. These networks employ modified firmware for the Linksys WRT54 router to create mesh networks. The OLSR style networks are self forming, constantly updating. You can configure some nodes with actual internet access to bridge members of the mesh to the real internet. I used the mesh in a specialized application using a TCP/IP based publish/subscribe middleware spread over a very long train.
The mesh provide the dynamic wireless paths to the locomotive as the train geometry changed. The “Freifunk” arrangement is more statically connected than a moving train. Check out the www.olsr.org for free OLSR mesh code that can be deployed on Windows PCs and UNIX like operating systems. The versions of the protocol that can see the RSSI (signal strength) can apply that information to provide better routing metrics. The non-RSSI aware version uses a different packet format over the air. You have to decide which one to deploy. My old embedded wireless Ethernet adaptors didn’t have access to RSSI, thus I was compelled to use the non-RSSI version. I would have preferred RSSI metrics to improve the quality of the routing decisions.
HAM packet has been traditionally AX.25 on top of NETROM to achieve connectivity. It’s not nearly as agile as the WiFi flavor described above. You have some real modulation limits on the low bands. On 2m, you can get some 56Kb modems (I think TAPR may still have some).
For non-packet narrow band work, check out PSK31. It’s a narrow band flavor of what we used to do on the old ASR teletype with 170 Hz shift, but MUCH narrower. All you need is a PC with a sound card an connections to your radio play.
Today is a good day to die.
I didn't say for whom.