Open Garden: Mobile overlay mesh network for Internet access
1. Open Garden —
Mobile overlay mesh network for Internet access
Grow your own Internet
Stanislav Shalunov
September 22, 2012
Making More of Mobile
Cambridge Computer Laboratory Workshop
2. Open Garden
Small startup in San Francisco
Still very early—a lot of the vision not in the product
1.5 million installs, just to have a testbed
Evolving technology and product vision
Ship early and often development cycle
3. Problem space
Every smartphone owner in the developed world has a
portable device without cellular connectivity.
Connectivity is ubiquitous, yet elusive.
Multiple connection logic: if Wi-Fi, then turn off 3G/4G.
With the many connections, poor reliability.
4. Internet everywhere
Basic networking technology
Make more Internet
On more devices
More of the time
Faster
Open Garden/MANET = BitTorrent/multicast
5. Status
Shipping v1 with a few features
Working on a v2 with many more
Also have earlier market test apps
6. Open Garden v1
Share connectivity between devices
Android, Mac, Windows
Use mobile connectivity on laptop or tablet
Users get connectivity where they didn’t have it
7. Open Garden v1 tech
Install, done.
Everything happens automatically.
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct.
Can connect via Bluetooth without discoverability or
codes to type.
8. Open Garden v1 vs
tethering/personal hotspot
Android tethering takes seven screen gestures to start.
Open Garden takes zero.
Don’t need to remember to turn it off, either.
Less than 1% of smartphone users have access to
tethering.
9. Open Garden v2 (future)
Maintenance of the mesh.
Channel bonding.
Multi-hop.
More graceful failover: tune, not switch.
