Wireless mesh network

Imagine you are playing a game of "telephone" with your friends. You have a message to send to the last friend in the line, but you can't shout it out loud because there are people in between you and the last person.

So, what can you do? One option is to whisper the message to the person next to you, and they can then whisper it to the person next to them, and so on until the message reaches the last person. This is kind of like how a wireless mesh network works!

In a wireless mesh network, there are many devices, like your computer or phone, that can talk to each other wirelessly. Imagine each device as a person in your "telephone" game. Each device can send data to other devices in range, and each device can also receive data from other devices in range.

Now, imagine the devices as parts in a spiderweb, each connected to one another. Just like how a spider can travel from one part of its web to another, data can travel around the mesh network by hopping from one device to another until it reaches its destination.

This is different than a traditional Wi-Fi network, where one device, like a router, is in charge and connects the others to the internet. In a mesh network, every device is important and can help move data around.

So, why would someone want to use a wireless mesh network? Because it can help create a big and strong network even if there's no one device that's strong enough to reach everywhere that needs to be connected.

Think about a big house with many rooms, where the Wi-Fi signal isn't strong enough to reach every corner. In a mesh network, you could add a device to each room that could connect to the others and help spread the signal around, so that every room can have good Wi-Fi.

With a wireless mesh network, everyone gets to participate and help make the network stronger, kind of like how everyone in the "telephone" game had to work together to pass the message along.