MESH NETWORKING COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE AND WHERE RIGHTMESH FITS IN
We are often asked about competitors in the mesh networking space and where RightMesh fits in.
Many types of mesh networking implementations exist today. At a high level, mesh networking solutions can be broadly classified into two categories: hardware-based and software-based solutions.
First, it’s helpful to understand how mesh networking solutions differ from “traditional networking” solutions, which can also be hardware or software based.
For the purposes of a competitive analysis, we can define traditional networking as a connection between two endpoints with at most one wireless hop between the end user device and the infrastructure network (either a Wi-Fi hop to an interconnected router or a cellular hop to a tower). The distance in between is covered with expensive wiring, fibre optic cables, point to point wireless on licensed spectrum, and using servers in a separate region.
Mobile Mesh networking requires none or very little of this expensive infrastructure and minimizes the physical distance between two endpoints. This is possible by wirelessly connecting multiple nodes or devices (in our case, smartphones via Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi direct and bluetooth).
Traditional infrastructure mesh networks are designed to extend existing internet coverage, but the connections are still designed to be centralized: even if 2 devices are right beside each other, data will still go to the same mesh router, through the internet backbone, to a server on Amazon, Google or Microsoft, and then back down the exact same way to end up at the side-by-side device. This is both inefficient and expensive. Mobile mesh networks find the most appropriate connection(s) between two peers whether that is through other devices, infrastructure, or a combination of both. Some mobile meshes, like RightMesh, can even be designed to use local connections first when they exist.
The majority of companies in the connectivity space fall under the hardware-based traditional networking quadrant (lower left quadrant). This is dominated by the many players that connect the online world today, including network equipment providers, telecommunication companies, and Internet giants.
Not surprisingly, this is also where the most investment is being made today. There are a few dominant technologies that fall under the software-based traditional networking space, such as Bluetooth and AirDrop (upper left quadrant). Several file transfer applications such as SHAREit, which rely on peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections between two nodes, are very popular in emerging markets. However, connectivity is restricted by short range distance, and limited to one to two hops at most with a likely maximum of about 250 devices (limited by IPv4 addresses in one subnet); whereas,mobile mesh networks can support tens of hops and potentially hundreds or thousands of devices in one mesh.
Hardware mesh networking solutions (lower right quadrant) have gained a lot of recent attention, most notably for Wi-Fi routers (e.g. Meraki, Eero, Ammbr) that act as “fixed nodes”. These are often designed just to extend Wi-Fi coverage in homes rather than to be scalably deployed global mesh networks. The other popular hardware mesh networking solution is mobile phone accompaniments (e.g. goTenna which requires an additional piece of hardware to form the network and which is not a viable solution in emerging markets where people do not have the funds for additional hardware).
The software-based mobile mesh networking space (upper right quadrant), to which RightMesh belongs, is much more sparse in comparison. This is not due to the fact that it has not been thought of seriously. In fact many companies have attempted to build mobile mesh networks, but with only limited success. We firmly believe that in order for mesh networking to be truly impactful, it needs to reach mass markets and for that, it needs to run on existing devices and OS platforms — without rooting the smartphone. RightMesh also incorporates RMESH tokens to incentivize sharing and density.
Other sometimes-called-competitors like Orchid and Mainframe could also appear in this quandrant; however, they are simply overlay networks that aim so solve problems such as data encryption, anonymous access, or privacy. They are not designed to create meshes that do not already have internet connections.
RIGHTMESH DESIGN PRINCIPLES & KEY DIFFERENTIATORS
When we set out to build RightMesh, we identified three key design principles for the platform which we believe are critical to encouraging mass adoption of a mobile mesh networking solution.
- Use the phones and wireless technology people already have: Most other mesh solutions require purchase of additional hardware, which is an expense often out of reach for those presently lacking connectivity.
- Don’t require rooting of the phone: It should be as simple as downloading an app for someone to participate in and enjoy the benefits of a mesh network.
- Don’t require user intervention (pairing, accepting connections, joining): Make it simple and seamless for a node (smartphone) to participate in the network, nodes should be able to participate autonomously for good UX
Other key considerations:
- Aim to be seamless at managing local connections like a cell phone moving from tower to tower.
- Avoid the Internet wherever it makes sense.
- RightMesh app developers can leverage success of other apps for density.
COMPARISON WITH MESSAGING PROVIDERS AND MESH NETWORKING PROJECTS
Although comparing messaging providers to RightMesh is like comparing apples to oranges (or, in our case, comparing a messaging network to a data network), it is something we are often asked to do. Here is a high-level overview of two key competitors to a RightMesh enabled messaging solution — the first being typical messaging applications and the latter being other mesh networking solutions in the marketplace.
OPEN GARDEN / FIRECHAT COMPARISON:
Open Garden has been around for about the same time as RightMesh, and we are most frequently asked how we compare to them. While we were working on our app YO! (an offline messaging and file sharing app which worked within a single hotspot) in emerging markets in 2014–15 (before RightMesh), OpenGarden had their own app called FireChat which was probably the first publicly available mobile mesh networking app that could run only using mobile phones and no other infrastructure. It gained attention for its use in the Hong Kong and Arab Spring protests after governments shutdown telecom networks there, but since then they’ve had issues in scaling that app. Meanwhile, we pivoted from our YO! application to build a mobile mesh networking protocol from the ground up (so any app could be mesh enabled rather than just mesh enabling YO!) — which is what RightMesh is today.
Essentially, we believe we differ from the Open Garden mesh networking platform in terms of our underlying technology and how our protocol works. One of the newest members of our team, Dr. Lucien Loiseau, wrote this technical review on FireChat when it came out. (Please do note that this post is more than 3 years old and may not be reflective of their latest technology.)
In this post he mentioned that with FireChat, all messages were broadcast locally to every node in the network and was easily interceptable. One of our core principles for RightMesh is to build a networking stack with message routing and encryption at the core of the protocol, instead of a using a ‘broadcast-to-all’ mindset which is rather inefficient and resource intensive.
With that said, we’ve looked at their revamped website and while we cannot say this for a fact since there is no white paper available yet, it appears that they have abandoned mesh networking altogether, and are instead positioning their technology to be “sharing their WiFi connection with others nearby”. This is a departure from mesh networking and instead is just one-hop communication rather than multi-hop communication.
This appears to be a tokenized version of the popular Fon network that exists in Europe. They have had executive management changes over the past year or two, and this new product strategy could be a result of that. We cannot confirm that this is the case with certainty, this is just our assumption based on what we see from their website. However if this is the case, then there are big differences between RightMesh and Open Garden. Open Garden is about sharing your WiFi connection with another person. RightMesh is about connecting communities for a purpose. Different missions, different use cases, and different technologies.
Additionally, the founder and former CEO of Open Garden & FireChat, Micha Benoliel, is one of our advisors on RightMesh.
Conclusion
We’ve done our best to outline the competitive landscape and to delve more deeply into specific comparisons we are most often asked about. If you have any questions we’d be happy to answer those, or provide specific comparisons to other products. Send your emails to dana@rightmesh.io.
