New subject: [lime-users] LibreMesh for load balancing among communities to serve a crowd

6 Jun 2019

Short version:

If we make a mesh with 5 routers running LibreMesh, and each router has 
an internet connection, and a crowd of people gather at one node and all 
use the WiFi simultaneously for internet communication, will LibreMesh 
effectively load balance, thus making full use of all 5 internet 
connections?

Long version:

During the celebration of Inti Raymi in the sierra, about 5000 people 
come to visit a town that has a population of about 800 during the rest 
of the year. That community is in a parroquia that includes 6 
communities in total. This year, in the town that hosts the Inti Raymi 
celebration, they want to offer internet via WiFi to the visitors (30 
minutes free, then pay if they want more). So, instead of signing a 
3-year contract for a fiber optic connection (when we only want 2 weeks 
of higher-capacity connectivity), or contracting a DSL line with no 
contract but slower speeds, it occurred to me to bring all the 
connections in the parroquia to the Inti Raymi celebration, and let load 
balancing do its magic.

Question: How can LibreMesh make this work?

Proposal:
At each internet connection, place a LIbreMesh router, connect that to 
an antenna/radio that links to the celebration center. At the 
celebration center, bring all those connections to another router with 
LibreMesh. In other words (LM = LibreMesh router:

internet A -- LM --link via LHG5--\
internet B -- LM --link via LHG5---\___omnidirectional antenna/radio
internet C -- LM --link via LHG5---/   or multiple LHG5
internet D -- LM --link via LHG5--/          |
...                                          |
...                              LibreMesh router at celebration site

Then from that LibreMesh router at the celebration site, we would build 
out the celebration network of WiFi for 5000 people. Maybe with 
LibreMesh-ed WiTek R1 routers, maybe Unifi, maybe wAP. The advantage of 
the Unifi or wAP is that each router can handle more clients than a 
WiTek R1, and there are stable captive portal and ticket softwares for 
those systems, and Pirania isn't yet ready to do this in LibreMesh.