Hi!

I'm on the edge of deploying a large WLAN-network in a rural area. 

We are going to hook up 10-30 households via WLAN links, and as I like
m0n0wall I'd like to hold on to that.

But to increase the uptime of the network, I'd like not to deploy it as
a tree-structur, but to build one or more rings instead. From that I
hope to be able to have automatic fall-back to altenativ routes if a
node goes offline.

The idea i to bould a routed network, with routers on each location, and
giving each location each own subnet(s). Some with wlan-access some
without.
All the links will be closed connections, but the WLAN-nodes will have
semi-public access, so anyone with a membership can use any hotspot, but
still using his own private IP (thinking of requering a VPN to get
internet-access from the hotspots)

Now the questions:

Has anybody done such a thing?

What about routing-protocols? How do I proporgate a missing link to the
rest of my network?

I've also been looking a little on building a wireless mesh, but I don't
know if that would suit our need s for QoS and security.

Would a solution be to create a wireless mesh on the inside, and letting
a monowall only handle external trafic?

TIA, and happy new year

-- 
Henning Wangerin <mailinglists dash after dash 041101 underscore reply dash not dash possible at hpc dot dk>