One of the most significant (Layer 1, Layer 2) developments in the wireless world has been the innovation of so-called Mesh design. The design provides for

• "Organic" growth - adding nodes allows the network to grow upon itself by “learning” about neighboring nodes.
• "Self Healing" - if a node fails, the mesh network reroutes the data path.

These features make MESH a useful choice for municipal networks. It is important to know the capabilities of different vendors in choosing equipment. With some, capacity is impacted in scaling multiple hops because bandwidth is divided by two each time you add a node.

Mesh architecture lends itself to both indoor and outdoor deployments and bandwidth considerations are important in their design.  Most of the networks that SideBand Systems designs are hybrid – a combination of Mesh, point-to-point and point-multi-point deployments.

Mesh applications include video surveillance, key entry login and control as well as Local Area Network wireless data and voice over IP (VOIP). Most manufacturers of MESH products allow for the formation of VLAN’s to provide appropriate Quality of Service (QOS) in time-critical applications such as VOIP.