From Mobielpipeline.com Microsoft gets into wireless mesh

People living in remote areas and small businesses operating in rural neighborhoods complain that they’ve missed out on the Internet revolution because service providers won’t run high-speed links to their locations.

Microsoft Research is working to develop technology that will make it easier and cheaper to provide those users with faster Internet connections. Last week, Microsoft unveiled partnerships with seven universities to develop Mesh Connectivity Layer technology.

The goal is to create a wireless mesh network among users who can then share a single, high-speed Net connection

Mesh Connectivity Layer is a loadable Microsoft Windows driver that lets computers communicate via a wireless mesh network using Wi-Fi or WiMax services, tricking the computer into thinking it’s directly connected to an Internet connection.

The software creates a virtual network adapter that looks like a regular network connection to the computer, and uses an Internet Engineering Task Force protocol called Link Quality Source Routing to route data among computers in the neighborhood.