About: Shared mesh

A shared mesh (also known as 'traditional' or 'best effort' mesh) is a wireless mesh network that uses a single radio to communicate via mesh backhaul links to all the neighboring nodes in the mesh. This is a first generation mesh where the total available bandwidth of the radio channel is ‘shared’ between all the neighboring nodes in the mesh. The capacity of the channel is further consumed by traffic being forwarded from one node to the next in the mesh – reducing the end to end traffic that can be passed. Because bandwidth is shared amongst all nodes in the mesh, and because every link in the mesh uses additional capacity, this type of network offers much lower end to end transmission rates than a switched mesh and degrades in capacity as nodes are added to the mesh.