IoT, Advanced Services and the need for detailed capacity planning in Mesh Networks

Mesh networks offer a low cost solution to deploying IoT devices where traditional star networks such as Ethernet or wifi are not available or present a barrier to the sales process. With star networks, range costs money but bandwidth is nearly free; however with mesh networks the opposite is true – range is free but bandwidth costs money. It is thus critical to contemplate the full lifecycle bandwidth needs of a mesh network in advance of its installation or risk deploying a network that is fully subscribed at t=0 and unable to support any additional use cases of the attached assets. Don will review the technology, available network bandwidth and required bandwidth in support of many commonly discussed use cases such as wayfinding, asset tracking and voice services.