Commentary: the joy of mesh

Wherever there are several XO laptops, a so called mesh can be formed. A mesh network is a highly resilient form of network in which data, voice, and instructions can transfer between network nodes through a series of hops in a wireless peer-to-peer fashion. In its simplest form, a mesh network is ad hoc: your computer can join or invite other computer owners to the network, provided that they are within range. It is enough for one computer in the mesh to have an internet connection for everybody to get access to the internet, and many other resources can also be shared, such as a printer connected to a USB port on one of the computers.1 The data rate across this network will not be high but should still easily serve a few dozen …