A Low-Cost Route to the Web

Meraki, a Silicon Valley start-up company that has powered thousands of simple, inexpensive wireless networks around the world, began with a concept different from the single source "hub-and-spoke" model of a network with a central source. Developed initially by students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States (US), it works on the theory of "string[ing] together several small radios that bounce information from one to another. Instead of just radiating in a straight line, data can zigzag from box to box. That way, if one link breaks, the rest automatically reconfigure and find a different path for that e-mail or Web page to travel."

Meraki's 25-year-old Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sanjit Bis-was took his model to scale, making the internet available to people at a low cost in areas of 70 countries. Meraki doesn't offer Internet service. It provides the hardware and software to manage a network. Central to the business is the US$50 wireless Mini - a wireless router that, though it is neither the fastest nor most powerful on the market, is simple and inexpensive, according to this article.

While major companies in municipal wireless information networks (Wi-Fi) may be discussing abandoning their large wireless projects, Meraki networks are developing in Amazonian towns, African cities, and Alaskan outposts, as stated here, due to their low cost and low maintenance.

The concept came from an MIT student project of Bis-was and company cofounder John Bicket called Roofnet, which covered a third of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (US) with internet service from earlier larger devices that the two installed on homeowners' roofs. In its current form, the Meraki mini radios are the size of two decks of playing cards, plug into an electrical outlet, and talk to one another, alerting a central operator if one malfunctions. Their simplicity and cost have attracted entrepreneurs from countries like Slovakia, who hope to build a base for both urban and rural networks using the devices. They are in use in large apartment complexes where they extend internet connections to all residents (The example given is NetEquality, which splits 5 high speed internet lines for internet access of 400 apartments.) Without advertising, the company has seen “grapevine-style” growth since its founding.