Set up Small Campus / Small Enterprise Network with WiFi

The Small Campus Enterprise Network firmware is designed to allow a collection of Mesh Potato (MP) devices to provide a data and telephony network for a small campus.

The intended use is typically for a small/medium size organization which needs to set up a number of workstations spread over a limited geographic area, with each workstation being equipped with a telephone and a networked PC, and to do this wirelessly without using conventional LAN cabling.

The meshed MP devices utilize an OSI Layer 2 protocol and simply act as one large switch, transparently connecting all the attached devices together.

Each MP device provides a telephone connection, an Ethernet cable connection, and a WiFi Access Point. PCs and other network devices may be connected to the Ethernet port of an MP, or connect wirelessly to the WiFi Access Point of each MP.

The WiFi access point is encrypted with WPA by default in order to provide some protection from abuse of the data network as long as the pass phrase/key is kept confidential.

If one or more of the MP devices is connected via its Ethernet port to a LAN with a router / DHCP server and Internet access, any PC connected either by Ethernet cable to an MP or by WiFi, will be able to acquire a DHCP address on the LAN and connect to the Internet via the router.

Similarly, networked devices such as printers or storage devices may be attached to the LAN via an MP. All attached devices will appear on the LAN and will be visible to each other.

Each MP device provides a telephone port which may be called from another MP telephone by dialing the IP address of the required device. Abbreviated dialing is also supported so that a call may be made by dialing just the last octet of the required IP address.

To use telephony off the local mesh, individual MPs can be configured to access a SIP/VoIP Service Provider account for outgoing and incoming calls.

Configuration and management of individual MP devices is possible via telephone IVR commands, browser or terminal sessions with access to the underlying Linux operating system and OpenWRT software.