I’ve noticed that each of the three iPhones I’ve owned over the last three years have a problem passing off to the 3G network when the WiFi signal is too weak to use. In other words, when the signal strength on the WiFi network is very low, the iPhone will still prefer WiFi to 3G, even if the WiFi connection is unusable. This happens every time I get to the far side of the house, but it also gets me when I’m on the bus and signal is coming and going, or when I’m walking around outside at work, and while I can still get a little of work’s network, I can’t use my phone without disabling WiFi.

I can’t fix the problem at work – I’m not in control of that – but I can fix things at home. Or so I had thought, with Apple’s mesh networking implementation in their Airport line of products. In previous iterations of my home networking setup, I’ve tried using an Airport Express to extend the network of an Airport Extreme. While it works, it’s not the most reliable thing, and as I have older Airport hardware, I can’t run simultaneous 802.11g and 802.11n networks while keeping things running at d decent speed. Finally, the cost to upgrade to the newest line of Apple networking products is substantial – the current generation Airport Express is $99, and the current generation Extreme is $179. Poking about online, I think I have the answer I need: Open Mesh

Specfically, the MR500 Mesh Router from Open Mesh. It’s $99 per unit, and cleverly runs 2 CPU’s – one for user traffic, and one for mesh traffic. It also uses both the 2.4 ghz band and the 5 ghz band – but the 5 ghz band is reserved for mesh traffic. This is all done in the name of enterprise grade reliability – the packets must keep flowing. The system also supports multiple gateway devices from the wired network to the wireless network, even ones on different ISPs, so failover between networks should be seamless. There is also the provision for per-user rate limiting, public and private networks, and self-restarting hardware if the software stack crashes. All for the $99 per-unit cost. It also has a built in 5 port ¹⁰⁄₁₀₀ switch, so you can use it to bridge physical network segments.

The only downside to the system, as best I can tell, is that all the management and configuration of the devices is done on the Open Mesh website. They run a web app that you create an account on, and when the device powers it, it looks for it’s MAC address on the service, and configures itself accordingly. My concern comes in for times that my link to the internet is down, but I still want to stream movies and music inside the house. That is one example, and I’m sure others would have better ones, but it’s a concern. I need to do a little more digging and see if the device will just come back up under it’s old settings, assuming nothing should change if it can’t talk to it’s master. I’d feel a little more comfortable if I could run a local version of the cloud management application, but nonetheless, this is still worth looking at.