Mesh Potato
The Mesh Potato is the name of a piece of wireless telephony hardware and software that doesn’t exist yet. It is a marriage of a low-cost wireless access point (AP) capable of running a mesh networking protocol and an Analog Telephony Adapter or ATA. Low-cost wireless APs such as the Meraki or OpenMesh (Accton Mini-router) APs are rapidly gaining in popularity due to their low-cost, relative robustness, and ease of installation. Adding the ability to plug an ordinary telephone into a device like an OpenMesh AP opens up very interesting possibilities.
Here is the story of how the idea of the Mesh Potato came about.
We are currently putting together a plan to develop a prototype of the Mesh Potato by the end of 2008. Have a look at the wiki for more details.
